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GOD'S WORD 

THROuaH Preaching. 

THE LYMAN BEECHER LECTURES BEFORE 

THE THEOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT 

OP TALE COLLEGE. 

{FOURTH 8EIiIE8.) • 



/ BY 

JOHN HALL, D.D. 



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NEW YORK : 

DODD & MEAD, PUBLISHERS, 

751 Broadway. 






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Th« t,IBRARY 
OF CONnKKiS, 



WASHINGTOfiJ 



COFYBIQHT, DODD & MBAS, ISTS. 



FbOM THE ReCOKDS OF THE CORPOKATION OP TALE COLLEGE, 

April 12, 1871. 

" Voted to accept tlie offer of Mr. Henry W. Sage, of New 
York City, of the sum of ten thousand dollars for the founding 
of a lectureship in the Theological Department, on a branch 
of Pastoral Theology, to be designated * The Lyman Beecher 
Lectureship oh Preaching,' to be filled from time to time, upon 
the appointment of this Corporation, by a minister of the gos- 
pel, of any evangelical denomination, who has been markedly 
successful in the special work of the Christian ministry." 



Yale College, Theological Department, 

March 11, 1875. 
Rev. John Hall, D.D.: 

Dear 8ir : — Allow us to thank you in our own behalf, and in 
behalf of the Theological Seminary under our care, for the 
course of lectures which you have just completed. The Ly- 
man-Beecher Lectureship on Preaching will be of inestimable 
value to the churches, if, year after year, it shall continue to 
bear such fruit. 

You have seen the close and delighted attention with which 
our students, and not a few others — most of them working 
ministers of the Gospel — have listened to these Jectures. You 
have been giving— in your own style, simple, lucid, and forcible 



— not a theory or science of Homiletics deduced from your study 
of great preachers, ancient and modern, but (in accordance with 
the intention of the generous founder) practical counsels, drawn 
from your own experience through a long and eminently suc- 
cessful ministry begun in your native country, and continued 
with undiminished fidelity in ours which has adopted you. We 
are sure that these young men, dispersed as they will soon be 
over the breadth of the continent, and some of them into other 
lands, will be better ministers, both in the pulpit and out of it, 
for what they have heard from you — ^better in the highest sense, 
for what we have valued most of all in these lectures is the 
deep and healthy religious impression which they have left 
upon the hearers. 

We are happy to learn that the lectures are soon to be pub- 
lished, and we are confident that the ministry generally, of all 
denominations, and especially young ministers, will thank God 
for the grace that has been given to you for this good work. 

We are, with much respect and affection, your brethren in 
the Gospel, 

Leonard Bacon, 
George E. Day, 
Samuel Harris, 
James M. Hoppin, 
George P. Fisher, 
Timothy Dwight. 



PEEFATORY NOTE. 



These lectures were written to be spoken, not 
read. It was not possible to suspend the necessary 
labors of a pastor in order to seek elegance of style, 
or abundance of authority or of illustration, even if 
such had been possible to the author, or desirable in 
the lectures. A colloquial expression, or a homely 
illustration has not been rejected, if it seemed to set 
out the idea to be conveyed. The main object has 
been to give and suggest thought, to magnify the divine 
word as the preachers instrument, and to point out 
the methods in which it is to be employed in preach- 
ing. 

In undertaking this important and responsible task, 
the lecturer did not, and does not now, think himself 
fitted for its execution. He was overruled by the 
judgment of others. But, in its progress, he was 
much encouraged by the Professors of the Divinity 
School ; by generous appreciation from those whose 
names give lustre to Yale College (even so much 



2 PEEFA TOR Y NOTE, 

identification with which will always be a grateful 
memory) ; but more than all, by the serious and 
thoughtful attention given by the students. 

To the young brethren, then, first of all of the Yale 
Divinity School, and next to the other candidates for 
the ministry in America, however described by 
Church connection — if they will please to read with 
candor what is designed in Christian love — these 
pages are affectionately and respectfully dedicated, 
with the prayer that the blessing of the Holy Ghost 
may give efficacy to so much truth as is here set 
forth, to the glory of our common Lord and Master, 
Jesus Christ. 

New York, March, 1875. 



I 



CONTENTS, 



LECTURE I. 

Objects of Lectures — Idea of tlie Churcli — When the Church 
Began — Nature of Church- claim — The Church's Name 
— Significance of Name — Who shall Teach — Church-Eites 
— Ministers Dispense Ordinances — The Idea of the 
Ministry — The Commission — Not Plenipotentiaries — Nor 
Scientific Preachers — Guesses at Truth — Authority in 
Teaching — Not Day-dreaming — Risk of Reaction — Church 
Authority — Ritualism — Sacerdotalism — Regard to the 
Times — Truth admits of Test — Knowing in Ourselves — 
The Tongue of Fire ; 7-31 

LECTURE II. 

Pastors, Not Evangelists — Ministry not a Caste — Know the 
People — Go to their Homes — Pastoral Visits — Love the 
People — Be Known by the People — Children of the 
Church — Young Men and Maidens — Pulpit Topics — Pulpit 
Illustrations — A Necessary Bridge — Taking Trouble — 
Creating Power — Missed from Church — The Lapsing Mass- 
es — Cure of Souls — Growing Congregations — ^Brief Pastor- 
ates — Close to the People — Devoted Ministers — Genuine 
Men — The Man of Sorrows 32-55 

LECTURE III. 

Our Position — A Necessary Evil — The Children's Bread — 
Repent and Believe — Good Confession — Quality not Quan- 
tity — No Other Name— Christ the Sun — Jesus Only — Com- 
plete in Him — The Central Figure — Scripture Exposition 



4 CONTENTS, 

— False Ideals — Extempore — One Direction — For Example 
— Mental Pictures — Feed the Flock — Light and Heat — The 
Highest Themes — Let them Alone — What Men Want — 
Commending the Truth — Our Royal Master 56-80 

LECTURE IV. 

Preserve Health — An Educated Man — Intelligence Required 
— Confidence Commanded — Classics for Clergymen — The 
Languages of Scripture — Do not Rationalize — Preach, not 
Argue — Fruitful Fields — Unjust Estimates^Teach the 
People — Results, not Processes — Approaching Controversy 
— A Corrected Estimate — ^Value of Church History — Know 
your Bibles — Apt Quotation — Bible Language Best — Skill 
in Teaching — Learn from the Lawyers — Learn to be Con- 
tent — A Man's Real Life — Personal Devoutness — Christian 
Fellowship 81-105 

LECTURE V. 

Preparing a Sermon — Preachers, not Priests — Mechanical 
Preaching — With the Understanding — And of the Clouds 
— On the People's Level — Impressions Remembered — 
Adequate Themes — Bits of Scenery — New Sermons on Old 
Texts— Truth Rightly Divided— Study Fitness— Fidelity 
To-day — True Preparation — In the Mood — Preachers, not 
Actors — Where we Belong — A Plea for the Pen — Taking 
One's Own Measure — Great Speakers — Brilliant Excep- 
tions — The Spur of the Moment — The Authorities — Ser- 
mons Consecrated — Glory in the Lord 106-130 

LECTURE VI. 

Close Reading— Two Sides to the Question— Good Reading 
— Memorizing — Defects of the Plan— Speak Naturally — 
From Notes — A more Excellent Way — A Test of Good 
Sermons — In Black and White— Apostolic Example — 
Sermon at Athens— The Sons of the Prophets—With a 
Difference— The Way of the Fathers— Dry Bones— Mean- 



CONTENTS. 6 

ing, and its Utterance— Cool Blood — High Examples — 
Two Great Preachers — A Wilderness — Modern Masters — 
Dr, James W. Alexander— Let the Words Alone — Mind in 
a Libration — Like a Meeting Minister — Welsh Fire. . 131-158 

LECTUKE VII. 

Authority of the Word— Doubtful Disputations — Words in 
Season — Against the Stream — Looking Right on — For- 
bearing Threatening — The Redeemer's Tears — Speak Well 
— Vivacity of Style — No Stage-tricks — Grave with Grave 
Matters— Heart and Tongue— Dear Hearers — An Old 
Master — Light and Love — In the Face of Jesus — The 
Divine Appeal 159-176 

LECTURE VIII. 

A Portion to Each — All Scripture for All — Enlist the Men — 
Children at the Table — Factitious Interest — Competitive 
Preaching — Occasional 'Sermons — Measuring Men — Fu- 
neral Serrnons — Connected Discourses — A Series of Ser- 
mons — The Bible Unknown— The Inductive Method — The 
Facts and the Texts — Well-founded Theories— The Chris- 
tian Year — The Test of Experience — What Mean Ye ? — 
True Churchman ship — Missionary Preaching — Remember 
the Poor — Compel them to Come in — ^Love, not Law — 
Health by Exercise — Home, Sweet Home 177-202 

LECTURE IX. 

The Preaching Required by the Times — Changes Superficial 
— Satan Invents Little — Self-love Magnifies — Study Both 
Sides — The Golden Age Coming — Suddenly Rich — Friends 
by Mammon — Uses of Money — Abuses of Money — A Just 
Balance — Wise Men and Magicians— Appropriate Evi- 
dence — Philosophers Puzzled— Just Authority — Better • 
Signs — Nothing to Fear — Infidelity Overrated — Christians 
Assured — More Humanity — Revived Church-life — Stand- 
ing Together — The One Family — Cui Bono ? — Christians 
at Work— First Self, then Service— Faithful in All. . 203-229 



6 CONTENTS, 

LECTURE X. 

Popular Fallacies — Gifts not Withdrawn — Our Sources of 
Power — Ministers of Christ — Else, why Ordain ? — Fra- 
ternal Feeling — Trained Mind — Special Preparation — 
Weight of Character — Patient Continuance — Blessings by 
the Way— The Word is Powerful — The Word Incarnate 
— The Word Written — Believe and Obey — Paul and 
James — The Medicine is Good — Fitness in the Word— One 
Way for All — Use it Earnestly — Divine Sanctions — Divine " M 
Grace — Beseeching Men — Delay is Dangerous — I Believe * 

in the Holy Ghost— Conditions of His Aid— The Power of 
Christ 230-257 

APPENDIX. 

Preach Christ — Free Seats System — Whither to Go — About 
the Singing — The Doctors — Patients' Rights — Controver- 
sial Sermons — Women in Church-^How Much Study — To 
get the People Out — Clerical Manners — Read Selections — 
Words Recalled — Seeing Ladies — Doubtful Persons. . 259-274 



LECTURE I. 



In entering on this course of lectures. Gentlemen, 
I feel bound to declare to you that my own judg- 
ment has been overruled, and that no one can have 
so strong a conviction of my inadequacy to this task 
at the close, as I have at the commencement. Nor 
did I labor to persuade myself of my unfitness in 
order to evade some labor, and, least of all, in order to 
escape an undesirable association. On the contrary, I 
was much touched by the practical catholicity of the 
Faculty of this Seminary in seeking out a comparative 
stranger, and one outside of that honored band whose 
education, intelligence, courage, and Christian worth, 
have made New England what it is, and stamped a 
New England impress on so much of America. But 
no eagerness to respond to this attractive overture 
blinded me to the truth, that all I know on this mat- 
ter of preaching could be put into one lecture. Cer- 
tain brethren, however, to whose views I could not 



8 OBJECTS OF LEGTURE8. 

but attach weight, assured me that the general subject 
of pulpit ministrations fairly came within the scope of 
the foundation, and that I was not expected to revolve 
in the same orbit, nor to shine with the same bril- 
liancy as my predecessor ; that, in fact — though they 
did not so phrase it — one like myself, a long way on 
this side of the extraordinary, might be an encour- 
aging teacher and example to ordinary men, and, in de- 
tailing how commonplace qualities could be turned, by 
God's blessing on ordinary industry, to fair account, 
might guide, stimulate, and help students in theol- 
ogy. This last consideration, I confess, had the most 
weight with me. No talent is too great, no genius is 
too brilliant, no attainments are too rich, for the work 
of preaching ; but, thank God, average capacity can 
be trained into such an instrument as God the Holy 
Ghost will employ for the " work of the ministry, for 
the edifying of the body of Christ." ^ 

Preaching is not to be regarded and studied by 
itself, but in its relation to the whole work of the 
ministry. Nor is the ministry to be judged of as a 
detached piece of machinery, but in its place in the 
Church ; and, once more, our notions of the ministry 

*Epli. iv. 12. 



IDEA OF TEE GHUBGH, 9 

and of preaching will be much modified by our con- 
ception of the Church's history, nature, objects, and 
powers. To offer a concise statement of these will 
occupy this opening hour, and it is hoped usefully 
introduce what is to be further presented. 

The Church of Grod — in whose ministry. Gentle- 
men, you hope to serve — may be regarded in one 
of two aspects, when we speak of its history. We 
may think of it as one continuous body from the 
first family down to our own time, and to the end of 
the world, the same iii substance throughout, though 
under diverse forms and dispensations. In this sense 
the Christian Church is not a new thing, but a devel- 
opment of what went before, the growth of a tree 
planted in Paradise. Israel was at one time " the 
Church in the Wilderness."* If we wished to fur- 
nish a history of the American nation, we might 
properly begin, like Bancroft, with Colonization, and 
different forms of administration and possession, 
entire or partial, by Dutch, French, English, until 
there came to be an independent people — ^yokes of 
bondage and elements of restriction being thrown off — ■ 
and the community entered on an era of equal rela- 

* Acts vii. 38. 



10 WHEN THE CHUBCE BEGAN. 

tions with all the nations of the earth, free to all, free 
from all. 

In this wide and comprehensive sense, the Church 
is the body of Christ. ^ For this Church which He 
loved. He gave Himself, t Much aid may be gained, 
then, in our inquiry, from knowing what manner of 
ministry God gave His Church, even in the earliest 
dispensations. The Church is one. 

Or, we may speak of the Church as beginning with 
the appearance, or the ascension, or the gift of the Holy 
Ghost, or some other part of the work of our blessed 
Lord, after which it took the Christian name, and as- 
sumed, in the progress of events, new and appropriate 
form. So a historian of the United States might 
choose to commence his work with the Revolutionary 
War, or the proclamation of Independence. On this 
plan the writer would find himself obliged to make very 
full references to previous forces and conditions that 
formed the new national life ; and precisely so, when 
we deal with the Christian Church as such^ we can- 
not ignore, but are forced to dwell upon the character 
and influence of former dispensations as giving lan- 
guage and form to the Church of the Christian era. 

* Col. i. 18. t Eph. V. 35. 



NATTJEE OF CHURCH- CLAIM. H 

Unless, indeed, we are concerned in controversies 
regarding the future, and anxious to find a basis for 
special interpretations, the date from which we 
reckon the histor^^ of the Church is of little practical 
importance. ^ 

But this Church, in either aspect of it, is a divine 
institution. It is voluntary, indeed, as a society, in so 
far as that men are not forced into it by human com- 
pulsion. It is not voluntary, however, in the sense in 
which a club or a benevolent association is voluntary, 
I have not a right, as towards God, to remain out of 
His Church. He has thought at once of my inter- 
ests, and of His glory when giving the Sabbath, the 



*We refer to the discussion regarding the "kingdom," of 
which Premillennialists hold that Christ has not received it, or, if 
He has, it is only the kingdom of Providence (Dr. McNeile on 
the Second Advent), and will not receive it until His second com- 
ing. Against which it is argued, we think conclusively, that 
our Lord Jesus had a kingdom of grace from the beginning of 
human history, on the ground of what He should afterwards 
suffer as mediator ; and that on His ascension He was formally 
(if we may apply such a word in this connection) installed, the 
work being now palpably done. Hence such language as that of 
John vii. 39. The gift of the Holy Ghost was the evidence to 
men of Christ's kingdom being rightfully set up. He was " glo- 
rified." 



12 THE OHURCWS NAME, 

ministry, the Church, and the Scriptures, and I have 
no more right, as regards Him, to disregard His 
Church than to disregard the Ten Commandments. 
In just and violent reaction against that condition of 
things when the Church ruled as a great corporation, 
men's minds are in danger of forgetting this truth, 
and treating a divine, spiritual agency, of which the 
use is made imperative, as if it were a mutual-im- 
provement society, to be entered or not, as one feels 
inclined. 

The name of the Church in her present form is, 
and ever will be, Christian, not indeed by any formal 
enacting clause, but by natural causes overruled by 
the Lord, '^ And the disciples were called Christians 
first in Antioch. " Some over-fastidious persons 
object to any names but what they find in Scripture ; 
but they are not agreed as to one inclusive name. 
Some call themselves " disciples, " some " Chris- 
tians" (and some of them make the first syllable long 
for a distinct purpose), some " brethren " with prefixes 
of various kinds. They usually reflect on others for 
being called Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyteri- 
ans, or the like. They forget that these names are 
not in antithesis to Christian, but, seeing that there 



SIGNIFIGANGE OF NAME, 13 

are peculiarities of administration, these names define 
and describe those who, being Christians, adopt them. 
The holders of these names are not always responsible 
for them ; in many instances, as with " the people 
called Methodists, '' and the Quakers, they were 
given by unfriendly tongues. To object to the 
names is no more wise or candid than to quarrel with 
the naming of the streets, or the numbering of your 
houses. A man does not deny the unity of the race, 
who describes himself as an American, a German, or 
an Englishman. He would be thought crazy, if he 
refused to be known otherwise than as a human being, 
or an Adamite. So we can speak of Oongregation- 
alists and others without impugning the oneness of 
the Church of Jesus Christ. 

Nor is this sufficiently obvious fact without bearing 
on our themes. Christian is the substantive : Episco- 
palian, or Methodist, or Moravian is the adjective. 
And this ought to be true of the ministry and the 
sermons. Their first, most obvious and pronounced 
quality ought to be that they are Christian. There 
are times, and there is a place, for sectional truth ; but 
the staple of our ministry is to be Christian. 

The Christian Church has officers. There were at 



14 WJ3^0 SHALL TEACH, 

the beginning apostles. They appointed elders, ruling 
and teaching, who took the work from apostolic 
hands, and continued it according to instructions. So 
they carry it on to-day. They are successors of the apos- 
tles in so far as this that they do the same work and 
under the same authority, just as every patriotic 
American citizen upholding the fundamental institu- 
tions of this country is in succession to the signers of 
Independence. The " tactual succession " is an idol 
"graven by art and man's device," and has no place 
in the temple of God. 

The great business of the apostles was to teach. 
Miracles attracted notice, attested the teachers as from 
God, and, having fulfilled their necessary uses, were 
withdrawn when the new dispensation had acquired 
its hold ; as the wooden framework is withdrawn from 
beneath the arch when the mortar has set, as the 
wrappings are taken from the ingrafted branch 
where a vital union has taken place. Their great 
business they were to " commit to faithful men, " ^ 
able to teach others also. 

The Christian Church has outward rites and sacra- 
ments of divine appointment. Two have a place of 

* 2 Tim. ii. 3. 



CHURCH— BITES, 15 

permanent value and authority — baptism and the 
Lord's supper. One symbolizes union, the other ^com- 
munion with God in Christ. In the one we are 
shown as ingrafted into Christ ; in the other, as grow- 
ing up into Him. Both are means of grace, and 
while no wise and intelligent Christian will disregard 
them, neither will he confound them with the source 
of grace, nor the agent by whom souls are renewed 
and sanctified. Probably in the violent reaction 
against the excessive sacramentalism of mediaeval 
times, some Protestant churches have been inclined 
to undervalue these means. As they are adapted to 
our complex nature of body and spirit,^ it is easy to 
err regarding them, either by excessive spiritualizing 
or excessive rationalizing. So, also, we may clothe 

* It is remarkable that the hardest problems in psychology, and 
the most curious phenomena of life — on which a mischievous 
"spiritualism^' has for thousands of years built itself— should 
have their place in that very union of the material and the spir- 
itual to which the sacraments, with their complex character, have 
been adapted. One need not wonder that the same perverted 
ingenuity that made necromancers, conjurors, and every variety 
of oracle in heathendom, and found for them some plausible 
foundation in the facts of human nature, should have turned the 
sacraments into the coarsest kind of fetish, as has been done in 
Roman Catholic countries. 



16 MINI8TEBS DISPENSE ORDINANCES. 

them with an awful and mysterious grandeur that 
repels the average Christian, as is done with the com- 
munion of the supper in the North of Scotland ; or, 
worse still, we may degrade and yulgarize them, as 
was done when receiving the communion was made — 
as in Great Britain — a qualification for public office. 

That ministers are charged with the administration 
of the sacraments does not rest on any supposed 
superiority in holiness, or even in knowledge. They 
are however, representative men in the nature of 
things, accepted by their brethren as teachers, consti- 
tuted officers, and so far standing to the Christian 
society somewhat as the chairman, or the secretary, 
of a secular community stands to it ; so that what 
the community in either case does, it does by him. 
Ministers are the organs of the Christian society, and 
the sacraments, having among other uses, this, that 
through them the adhesion of members is formally 
made and maintained, the official persons are charged 
with that which binds and represents the society. It 
is needless to add that all this is on the human side of 
the matter, the moral and spiidtual efficacy of the 
sacraments depending not on "anything in them or in 
him that administers them, blit on the blessing of 



THE IDEA OF THE MimSTRY, 17 

Christ and the working of His spirit in them that 
by faith receive them." * 

These considerations regarding the nature of the 
Church, her officers, and sacraments, must determine 
in a good degree our views regarding the place and 
work of the ministry ; and if they do, our labor is 
not lost in their statement. 

To that part of our theme we now turn. 

Our translators made no discrimination in the two 
Greek terms of the apostolic commission, for which 
they have given the one word "teach.f " But there is 
a real distinction. In v. 19, we have the Greek word 
fxa^rrirevaarrj^ make discijples. When men believed 
and became disciples, the ordinance of baptism into 
the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, gave 
opportunity to join the Christian society, and avow 
discipleship,and now they became pupils to be taught, 
and another word altogether is employed, didaaKOvre<^^ 
teaching. 

Here was a double work for the Church's officers, 

evangelizing and instructing the evangelized, or, in 

other words, the work of a missionary till men came 

under the sway of Christ, the work of a pastor after- 

* Shorter Catechism. \ Matt. 28. 19. 



18 TEE COMMISSION, 

wards. Considering the variety of age, intelligence, 
and moral characteristics by which any of us must 
needs be surrounded, if we are to be good ministers 
of Jesus Christ we must be prepared for both these 
departments of apostolic work. While stationary, we 
must also be missionary. A man who only means to 
build up those who choose to come to him will usually 
have a contracting sphere of labor ; while a man , 
who neglects to feed the flock of God, in his eager- 
ness to gather into the fold, will fail of one great 
function of the ministry, the perfecting of the 
saints."^ The Lord makes us 7toi/j,€vas nai SiSaona- 
\ov^^ jpastors and teaGhers.\ 

"When we inquire what shall be taught, the Lord's 
words are sufficiently explicit. " Whatsoever I have 
commanded you. " This does not exclude subsequent 

* It has been proposed to read this weU-known sentence (Epli. 
iv. 12) '* for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the min- 
istry, " as if work were the purpose of their being perfected. 
This is, in fact, true in part. Saints do not go to heaven at their 
conversion, for this, among other reasons, that there is work for 
them to do. But while this reading would well suit the temper 
of an age when Christian activity has a fair share of attention, 
as compared with spirituality, it is not sustained by the construc- 
tion. See Ellicott in loo, 

t Eph. 4. 11. 



NOT PLENIPOTENTIABIES. 19 

direction by the Holy Ghost, but it takes away 
discretionary power from ns, and shuts us up to our 
instructions. We are not plenipotentiaries, but 
" ambassadors " with defined and limited powers. 
"We are not principals, but messengers, deputies, speak- 
ing with authority not inherent, but derived. Like 
the prophets who preceded Christ, we who come after 
Him must, instead of His divine and autlioritatiye 
" Yerily, verily I say unto you " (egotism inexplica- 
ble in one of such meekness, unless he meant to 
claim more than created dignity), ever say, '^Thus 
saitli the Lord. " Looking around on a flock com- 
mitted to us, we find some disciples by birth, and 
some disciples by belief, more or less strong and intel- 
ligent. What shall we teach them ? All things what- 
soever Christ commanded in person, or by His illu- 
mining Spirit ; of whose teaching we have the record, 
we are bound to believe, in the later books of the New 
Testament. 

This direction of our Lord rules out many themes 
that have found their way into the Christian pulpit. 
Science, for example, except as it may illustrate Scrip- 
ture truth, is excluded. It is one thing to employ it 
as Chalmers did in his Astronomical Discourses / it is 



20 NOB SCIENTIFIC PREACHERS, 

another to make tlie pulpit a scientific rostrum. This 
is no reflection on science, which has her own themes, 
pulpits, teachers, and appliances, and a noble ministry 
for man, and which always will be respectable and 
useful on her own ground, only making enemies among 
intelligent Christian men when she abandons it. ^ 

This same idea may be presented in another form. 
A preacher is all the stronger for understanding the 
Greek grammar, and an occasional reference to it, 
when the elucidation of a passage calls for it, is natu- 
ral and proper; but this is a very different thing from 
undertaking to teach Greek grammar in the pulpit. 

How good use a religious teacher may make of the 

— . „ • — • _ 

*In our own time an apparently serious breach, appears 
between science and religion. We say appears ; for it will be 
found that scientific men have given offense to religious, not as 
** scientists, " but as philosophers. No man quarrels with the 
experiments, the observations, and the interrogations of nature 
pursued by ** scientists. " Their pursuits, aptitudes, or travels 
have given them special facilities. It is when they philosophize 
on the results they suppose they have reached, and assume that 
they have all the facts in their hand, that their special faculty 
is denied and the divergence from Christians has commonly 
begun. And when one talks of a conflict between science and 
religion, it is of the first consequence that he define his terms. 
What is '' religion ? " How much does * ' science " include ? Did 
the magicians represent it in Moses' day ? 



G UESSE8 AT TB UTH. 21 

facts of the world will be obvious to any one who 
has read such a charming book as BiMe Teachings in 
Nature 'j "^ but discussions on natural history would 
not be to edification in the pulpit. A preacher of 
the gospel may range over all pastures ; he may, like 
the bee, levy his tax on all that is sweet and attractive 
around him ; but it is that the Church, which it is his 
business to feed, may have made good the promise of 
Isaiah concerning the holy child — " Butter and honey 
shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil 
and choose the good. " t 

The same limit excludes from the pulpit nearly all 
that comes under the general term of speculation. 
To guess ; to " think out " ingenious surmises ; to be 
undetermined and indeterminate ; this is sometimes 
supposed to be the sign- of great mental activity, and 
even force. Such a man is not " in ruts ; " he is out 
of the beaten track, truly ; he is "suggestive. " But 
of what ? A preacher of the gospel is not a builder, 
beginning at the ground and constructing a theology, 
or a theory of the universe. He is an embassador 
with instructions, a messenger with a message. Let 

■^By tlie Rev. Hugh McMUlan, Glasgow. McMillan d Co. 
f Isa. vii. 15. 



22 ^ UTHOBITT IN TEACHING. 

him deliver his message. He has no business to say : 
" I have been thinking of this theme. I have reached 
such and such results with my present light. I give 
you my conclusions so far as I have gone ; they may 
be different next week or month, as I get further 
light, and then — ^for I am perfectly honest — I shall 
report them to you with reasons." That is not, I 
humbly think, the tone for Christian preaching. It 
was proper enough in the Academic groves where 
Plato, Zeno, and Socrates gave their best thoughts to 
their disciples. But we are not. Gentlemen, heathen 
philosophers finding out things; we are expositors of 
a revelation that settles things. Our authority in 
speaking, like our right to speak, is founded on the 
word of the Lord. And it would, surely, be a little 
unreasonable to expect our fellow-men, as intelligent 
as ourselves, to repose with confidence on conceptions 
that are in obvious perpetual flux ! That were to 
build on a moving bog; to anchor to a log, itself 
drifting ; to set up landmarks of snow. They might 
well enough say to us, " Gentlemen, get something 
settled, and then come and tell it. " We need not 
wonder if men cease to go to church on such condi- 
tions. We need not affect surprise at religious indif- 



NOT DA Y-DBEAMma. 23 

ference, or the growth of all manner of abnormal 
mushroom crudities, springing up in the night which 
such speculation in the pulpit makes, and which 
must be treated with caution, since it is diflScult to 
distinguish the edible from the poisonous fungus. 
Life is too brief; men's souls are too valuable; too 
little time can be had for spiritual affairs to waste any 
of it on such day-dreaming. When Jesus said, " I 
am the way, the truth, and the life ; no man cometh 
unto the Father but by me, " He spoke positive 
truth, which it is our business to echo. He indicates 
a road to the Father, on which no human engineer- 
ing can make improvements. We are to set men's 
feet so far as we can on that road. Let authors, mag- 
azine writers, poets, and philosophers wander at their 
own sweet will gathering flowers and enjoying views 
over the prairie of unbounded imagination. We, my 
brethren, give ourselves to another task ; we are to 
direct human pilgrims, according to settled and fixed 
commandments from the Lord, into the way that 
leads through the gate into the city. 

One common result of the style of speculation in 
the pulpit now criticised is the recoil of the human 
mind into a credulous submission to authority, or 



24 BISK OF BEACTIOK 

what claims to be authority. I shall be very much 
surprised if there be not, in those portions of this 
country where positive teaching is lacking, a growth 
of those forms of the Christian faith, more or less un- 
Protestant, whose teachers claim to speak with 
authority not founded on an appeal to the command- 
ments of Christ, but on a great indefinite corporation 
behind them arrogantly labeled the "Infallible 
Church."^ 



* It will be alleged, perhaps, that this Church-teaching is only 
another form of the authority we urge and which free thought 
repudiates. This is true in so far as all successful error has an 
infusion of truth in it. Komanism in its various forms is a skill- 
ful travesty of truth. But it substitutes the authority of a body 
of men — ^liowever ancient that body— for that of God. The 
authority of God's word is of another kind ; and the appeal to it 
leaves the human mind free as to man, for it is in the hands of 
those who hear our appeal, and w*ho can judge of our accuracy. 
The difference may be made apparent by an analogy. Imagine 
a lawyer telling a jury: '' Gentlemen, my case is sustained by 
the universal body of jurists from the beginning: if the other 
side quotes cases to the contrary, they are not recognized by us 
as from the body of j arists. No one is in that venerable body 
but those who agree with us." His opponent says: "Gentle- 
men, my case is sustained by the statutes — here is the book. I 
shall read it to you. I shall hand you up the book, that you 
may examine it yourselves." This is the Protestant, Evangeli- 
cal ground. 



CHURCH A UTHORITT. 25 

While it is said in Scripture " hear the church ""^ 
on the small and practical details of the differences 
among the Church's children, thesq^ perverters of the 
right ways of the Lord apply the words to all the 
principles that constitute the Christian faith. Their 
Bible is only a private document of the Church. Our 
Bible is the Church's charter, book of laws, direc- 
tory and court of appeal. Their standard of time is 
a YQvj old and oft-repaired Italian watch ; ours is the 
unwearied sun.f 

The same limit shuts out what may be called Ritual- 
istic preaching. From long habit and church-usage, 
a usage which once prevailed over this country, I 
wear in the pulpit the gown and bands which are 
known as Genevan, and were once worn by scholars 

* Matt, xviil. 17 : and that Cliurcli, by tlie way, in the nature 
of things, must have been in the first instance the congregation. 

f It is of no use to say that if the Book is thus made every- 
thing, there is neither use nor place for a ministry. The an- 
swer is twofold, {a) The book calls for a ministry. He who 
gave it, and makes for it so extensive claims, does not regard it 
as superseding the ministry. He knows man's wants. And ih) 
practically the book no more sets aside the ministry than the 
admirable school-books of America set aside the great army of 
school-teachers who employ them. Men can do little more than 
copy God's methods. 
2 



26 RITUALISM, 

as distinguished from others. They are convenient 
to me, and to all awkward and nngainly men, and as 
a pnlpit uniform they save the people from the 
temptation to criticise our outer, when they sh ould 
be improving their own inner, man. But I should 
not feel at liberty to preach about them, or to find 
occult symbolical meanings in them. What was propei; 
enough when the Jews had a series of object-lessons 
and not a Bible, is a retrograde movement, a return 
to " weak and beggarly elements " in the Christian 
dispensation. This would hold, even if the symboli- 
cal teaching of the Ritualists were true in itself; but 
too often it is not. On the same principle, all that goes 
by the name of " Sacerdotalism " is excluded from 
our ministerial teaching. There is a true sense in 
which a minister, in common with all believers, is a 
priest to God,* but there is no true sense in which min- 
isters are a distinct priesthood, and the special appli- 
cation of the word to them in Protestant literature is 
singularly infelicitous. The lepev^ of heathen and 
of Jewish language had a true place. He was a 
sacrificing priest. Our Lord Jesus Christ is such a 
priest. t But we seek in vain for any such designa- 

* 1 Pet. ii.' 9. t See Heb. v. 6 ; vii. 15, in Gr. Test. 



SACEBDOTALISM. 27 

tion in the Scripture for the Christian teacher. He 
is EpisGoj>os^ from his functioDS as overseer (Acts xx. 
28) ; PresbuteroSj frora age or the qualities age i>s 
supposed to bring ; and Diaconos^ minister, from his 
being. a servant ; but never Hiereus.^ And this is the 
more remarkable, considering what a gain it would 
apparently have been to clothe the ministers of the . 
new religion with the honor and prestige of the estab- 
lished and recognized priesthood. But when this 
was done it was by a political and corrupt corpora- 
tion, and not by the Holy Ghost. 

While the positive rule that determines our themes 
is " all that I have commanded you," it is not to be 
understood that all the parts of the body of revelation 
are equally important. They have not all the same 
place. But they have all some place, and are essen- 
tial in that place. '^ Thumbs and great toes " are not 
the body, but they are essential to archery and run- 
ning ; and Adoni-bezek's captives were no longer fit 
for war when they had lost them. A book on the 

* "The Priests/' says Archbishop Whately, **both of the 
Jews and the Pagan nations, constantly bear, in the sacred 
writers, the title of Hiereus, which title they never apply to any 
of the Christian ministers ordained by the apostles." — Origin of 
Romish Errors, p. 95 (London edition).' 



28 BEGARD TO THE TIMES. 

rights of American citizens will not dwell at equal 
length on all the rights, nor at great length on those 
of a past generation ; thongh it will often be needful 
to go back over the history of a law or an arrange- 
ment, in order to show its present bearing. This prin- 
ciple all lawyers understand, and it is not to be ig- 
nored by the expositors of Scripture. It is so, also, 
in medicine. There are cycles of disease, and new 
developments of suffering. We require men to grap- 
ple with the maladies of to-day ; but ' to do so they 
must study the history of diseases, mode of develop- 
ment, conditions, remedies successfully exhibited in 
their treatment, that they may be competent to cure. 
It is so no less in the arduous labors of him who 
would labor for and under the Great Physician. 

Once more, men's views of truth are affected by 
conditions of their minds, the training they have had, 
the circumstances around them, and " the times " in 
which they live. A wise and competent teacher will 
present Christ's commandments in obvious application 
to the wants of the hearers, so that their fitness shall 
be recognized, and that they shall have all the gracious 
effect of saving truth to them. For it is one of our 
comforts and elements of strength that true theology 



TRUTH ADMITS OF TEST 29 

and true Christian life fit into each other. The 
Christian truth is not, as it is sometimes represented 
to be, esssentially different from all other forms of 
truth with which science can deal in the way of ex- 
periment ; nor does it rest so exclusively, as is some- 
times alleged, on positive external authority. When 
a man trembles at the thought of Grod and an invis- 
ible world, has he no experimental evidence of divine 
truth — no proof within himself that " it is a fearful 
thing to fall into the hands of the living God ? " 
When the Scripture declares that " out of the heart 
proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries," do we 
believe it only because it is there ? Do not we know 
within ourselves that it is true ? When the Lord 
talked with the woman of Samaria, was there nothing 
to impress but the probable credibility of the stranger ? 
Had she no evidence warranting her invitation, 
"Come, see a man that told me all things that ever I 
did ; is not this the Christ ? ""^ And the same argu- 
ment might be applied to conviction of sin, hope of 
pardon, peace of mind, fellowship with God, struggle 
with corruption, and victory over the world ; all 
which come within the range of experience. When 

^ John iv. 29. 



30 KNOWING IN OURSELVES. 

Elizabeth of Hungary, after rougli treatment from an 

old crone, who should have been grateful to her, tells 

her story, she has experimental evidence of spiritual 

truth. 

" Let be— we must not tMnk on 't. 
The scoff was true — I thank her — I thank God — 
This too I needed. I had built myself 
A Babel-tower, whose top should reach to heaven. 
Of poor men's praise and prayers, and subtle pride 
At mine own alms. 'Tis crumbled into dust I 
Oh 1 I have leant upon an arm of flesh — 
And here's its strength ! I'll walk by faith — by faith I 
And rest my weary heart on Christ alone — 
On Him, the all-suflBicient." ^ 

We can rejoin to experimental philosophers when 
they invite us to the laboratory, as we point to human 
fears, sense of guilt, remorse, despair, or, on the other 
and brighter side, to hope, peace, reform, and life of 
holiness, " Come and see." 

" Oh, make but trial of His love. 
Experience will decide 
How blest are they, and only they, 
Who in His word confide." 

To get, then, the mind of Christ, and to declare it, 

* The Saints' Tragedy (Act III. Scene II.) by the late Canon 
Kingsley. 



THE TONG UE OF FIBE. 31 

is the primary end of the teaching officers of the 
Church. The living body of sympathetic men, satu- 
rated with the truth and feeling of the book, must 
bring it into contact with other men, through that 
marvelous organ, the human voice, and with such aid 
as comes from the subtle sympathy that pervades 
assemblies of human beings. And while systemati- 
cally teaching Christ's truth, as they have learned it 
by the Holy Ghost, they must never forget the power 
that moved them, nor fail to honor that Divine Per- 
son who not only gives, but has condescended to be, 
a ^'tongue of fire." This work of speaking the 
truth is the justification, the "reason to be," the 
honor, the dignity of the Christian ministry. 



LECTURE 11. 



It was stated in the last lecture that the ministry 
is not to be regarded and studied by itself, but in its 
relation to the Church ; and so the sermon is not to 
be provided for as a detached factor, but as one of a 
number of co-operating forces. The ball is for the 
cannon ; and the cannon is for the artillery ; and the 
artillery is for its appropriate place as a portion of 
the army. "Whatever may be said hereafter of preach- 
ing in the Evangelistic method — where continuous 
teaching with the view of building up men is not 
contemplated — we here and now think of the preach- 
ing of pastors. We venture to think that — whatever 
may be done. by extraordinary men, who attempt 
little beyond preaching, and who effect much by 
the influence so exercised over masses of men-— to 
the average preacher the greatest amount of useful- 
ness comes by his being a pastor. It is freely 
admitted that the apostles were not continuous 



PASTORS— NOT EVANGELISTS 33 

laborers in limited spheres; but they were special 
agents for special work, with special gifts. It is 
freely admitted, also, that there have been apostolic 
men like Whitfield, John Wesley, ^nd, in a different 
sphere, Nettleton, who accomplished the most noble 
results by preaching, apart from pastoral labor. But 
fully conceding all this, we adhere to the conviction 
that for you and me — ordinary men — it is the wisest 
thing to labor concurrently with our preaching in 
those other and related ways, which come under the 
general head of "pastoral work," over a limited field, 
and by persistence, continuity of effort, and force of 
known character, to supply in some degree the lack of 
special gifts and extraordinary powers. If ever there 
was any lack of talking faculty in America, we have 
the prospect of a remedy in a revival of attention 
thereto. " Speakers " enough we shall probably 
always have ; but we want speakers who shall be 
pastors, and whose speaking shall be an integral 
part of an entire homogeneous pastoral woi-k. 

I propose to show the relation between preaching 
and the other parts of a minister's duties ; and I 
place this topic here, because it will contribute some- 
thing to our ideas as to preparation for preaching 
2* 



34 MINISTRY NOT A CASTE. 

as a life-work, and also as to the making of the 
individual sermon. 

A congregation is composed of a number of indi- 
viduals, including many groups of families, with 
some general features in common, but with great 
personal diversities. Living in the same locality, 
and meeting frequently, particularly in their religious 
assemblies, the members exercise an amount of 
influence on one another, and any force set in 
motion among them has a fair opportunity to be 
propagated. "What is the minister to the congrega- 
tion ? It does not matter, for our purpose, whether 
he is a member of it, or an outsider called to its 
help. We need not here raise the question whether 
he is one of a distinct order or not. This much is 
certain, he is not of a caste in any such sense as if 
the office were hereditary ; or as if celibacy, or some 
other important peculiarity, marked him off from 
his fellow-citizens and fellow-Christians. And while 
a certain peculiar brotherhood must needs bind 
together, and ought to bind together, ministers, 
everything tending to make them a caste ought to 
be deprecated. For our purposes, it is sufficient 
that the congregation invites a Christian man of 



KNOW THE PEOPLE. 35 

approved gifts and character to come and live 
among them at their cost, and labor for their own 
and their children's spiritual good. He accepts the 
position and the work, looking, indeed, over the 
heads of the people, and believing that through 
them his Master in heaven has beckoned liim to 
this j)ost of duty. 

Now, to make the most of himself, what, on the 
ordinary principles of common sense, which the 
Scriptures never contradict, ought he to do ? 
Obviously he ought to Tcnoio the peoj)le. A medical 
man has many advantages from knowing the con- 
stitution of an old patient; but he may also judge 
of present and palpable symptoms, and give the 
'best advice to one whom he never saw before. A 
lawyer may form a perfectly sound opinion on a 
case, of the parties in which he knows nothing but 
as they are in his brief or paper-book. But a 
minister's functions so essentially diflPer from the 
lawyer's and tlie doctor's, that acquaintance is desir- 
able, and spiritual influences will commonly run in 
the channel of confidence and affection. How can 
he know them? New- Year calls and visits of 
ceremony are good as far as {\\Qy go; but they do 



36 GO TO THEIR HOMES. 

not go far enough. Men are ^^ on their manners" 
at such times. Weddings and social meetings are 
a little better, for there men relax ; but they have 
their drawbacks. People do not go to evening 
parties to meet their clergyman, and be '' edified." 
They go to enjoy ; and the average clergyman is 
rather afraid of the imputation of talking "^ shop," 
and rather ambitious of being seen as the generally 
well-informed man. I do not blame him for this : 
a clergyman ought not to be conspicuously behind 
any whom he meets as a courteous, intelligent, 
agreeable gentleman. He may not have time or 
inclination to go much into society ; but it is as 
well that it should be known that he is a ^'"^leasant 
man to meet," when he can aiford it — neither a 
recluse, nor a boor, nor a Diogenes in his tub, 
ordering everybody ^^out of his sunshine." 

To make the acquaintance of his people, a clergy- 
man must go to their homes, see the family where 
the family lives, and converse with them in the 
freedom of their own homes. He may systematize 
this work ; make it more or less formal ; ^ prepare 

* In some of the Britisli cliurclies ministers visit, once a year, 
along with an elder. There may be some advantages in this. 



I 



PASTORAL VISITS. 37 

the people beforeliand or not ; ^ conduct devotional 
exercises in the family, uniformly or not; but he 
ought always to gain from going to the homes of the 
people. The generalities he delivers from the pulpit 
with easy confidence he should have opportunity to 
try on particular cases among his flock. His mode 
of life, training, conditions, habits of mind, difier 
from theirs in many cases. He ought to learn, and 
so come to allow for, their dijfferences. And not 

A wise deacon of spiritual and sympatlietic character miglit be 
a great help in some instances. But, as a general rule, there 
will be more frankness with the minister '^ by himself." And 
a visit from the deacon hy himself would probably effect more 
than if made as the attendant of the pastor. 

^ For many years I pursued, in common with many of my 
British brethren, the habit of mentioning from the pulpit the 
streets or localities in which visits would be made on particular 
days. This secured the presence of most of the family, and 
among plain people, a certain preparation. I see no obj ection to 
this plan anywhere. I wish we could have it, for the sake of 
thoroughness and as a check on desultory " calling." One of the 
best clergymen I ever knew, and one of the noblest of men, the 
late Dr. Urwick, Congregational minister in Dublin, had his 
congregation arranged alphabetically, and his announcements 
ran thus : " I hope to visit on Monday the families from G. to 
I." This plan entails some loss of time, as distinguished from 
the neighborhood method, as the " G's " might be widely scat- 
tered. 



38 LOVE THE PEOPLE, 

least, he should give himself a chance to form that 
" liking " for his people which is founded on know- 
ing, and to make that subtle chain of interest which 
is only formed by contact. You see a mother in her 
nursery, holding her baby in her arms, looking into 
its pinched, pale features to find out, if she can, if 
the symptoms of life or of death predominate. 
Your heart enters into her anguish. You kneel 
down at your chair, and ask God, who gave her the 
mother's heart, to give her grace and strength ; and 
you say what words you can of comfort and encour- 
agement. Can you ever feel to her again, as to an 
ordinary member of the human family ? And if the 
child is spared and grows up, is he not a little more 
to you than another child ? A man tells you some- 
thing of his life, his struggles, his sorrows, perhaps 
his sins ; his lip quivers, and his eyes overflow in the 
recital. If you have the first elements of a minister's 
nature in you, you must feel and speak to that man 
evermore with some influential memory of the inter- 
view. Any ordinary minister who is to do spiritual 
good to his people must love them. But ordinary 
men found their affectionate interest on acquaint- 
ance. It is not love in general, and in the abstract, 



BE KNO WN B Y THE PEOPLE. 39 

that makes a channel to -the human spirit, but love to 
individuals, into whose faces, and in some degree into 
whose hearts, you have looked. 

But a minister must go close up to his people, that 
they may know him. They will believe the more in 
his earnest desire to do them good, when they find 
him as a minister at their dwellings. They will hear 
him in a new spirit when he preaches. It is not 
quite true, that all the eloquence is in the audience; 
but much of it is there, as truly as the echo is in the 
bosom of the mountain in part, though in part also 
in the bugle-blast that evoked it. 

The strangest ideas are entertained by some re- 
garding ministers — ideas that notliing but contact 
will rectify. It is good for the people to see that he 
is human, " a man of like passions " with themselves, 
and as he goes among them a true, simple, natural, 
unaffected gentleman, walking on no stilts, free of 
all insolence of office, obviously fighting the battle of 
his life, as they are fighting theirs, they learn to 
believe that the sublime principles he enunciates 
from the pulpit are not for some retired, privileged 
spot inhabited by ministers, deacons, and their 
respective wives, but for common men and women 



40 CHILDBEN OF THE CHURCH. 

who live, and toil, and enjoy, and suffer, and who 
must die and be judged. 

But how does all this bear upon preaching? Much 
every way, as we shall see presently. 

But " preaching from house to house,'^ of the best 
manner of doing which, it is not needfulto speak 
here, is only one of several ways in which to come 
near the people. They are capable of being 
distributed into classes. There are the very young, 
who are to be brought into, and kept in, the 
Sabbath-schools. Whoever else works there, the 
minister is to be in the van. It is common to say 
that parents cannot delegate their duties to a Sabbath- 
school teacher. I^or can ministers. We should be 
in our schools, know the teachers, encourage them, 
help them, give them, if they need it, a little salutary ^ 
discouragement, and be known to, and know, their 
pupils. If one says, ''I have not time," it is answer 
enough to rejoin, " For what are you there ? Do 
not you know that these Sabbath-school children are 
your charge now, and will be your adult hearers in 
ten years ? " 

Above the grade of the children is another class — 
young men and women, many of whom should l)e, 



TO UNG MEir AND MAIDEN B. 41 

but are not, in tlie membership of tlie Church. A 
communicants' class ^ will reach them, and lead 
many, through the Divine blessing, to Christ, and to 
His table. A gentlemen's Bible reading, a ladies' 
Bible class, a workingmen's mutual improvement 
society, any suitable agency that brings minister 
and people together for a good object will do good 
directly and indirectly. One need not hold to the 
same form of effort continuously. Some things will 
get a fresh life under a new form or name. Only 
let these be conditions : that the pastor's eye is over 
all, and that as unobtrusively as he likes, but really 
he be felt for good in all ; and that he come near his 
people. 

JSTow, how does all this bear on preaching ? In 
three ways at least, to be mentioned with but little 
illustration. 

{ci) The minister will be aided in selecting from 
the materials he finds in the word. He knows his 
people, their condition and wants. He is the 
observer of constant development of character. He 



■^ This name is not familiar in America, but the idea may be 
realized under another name. 



42 PULPIT TOPICS. 

sees where the weak points are. There are matters 
of belief they do not understand. He will note 
them, and at a fitting time set them forth. There 
are practical duties falling into abeyance. Family 
altars are fallen, or the fire on them is burning 
feebly. He will magnify this priesthood and sacri- 
fice of the home. The children are getting too 
much of their own way, too little of godly training. 
He will spend a few Sabbaths, perhaps, on the 
commandments. Ko one can be hurt when the fifth 
comes in its place. There are signs of loose morals 
in the community. The seventh or the tenth he 
will not slur over ; in fact, it would be very strange 
if he did. And every pastor will find that a certain 
life is infused into sermons that have a fitness of 
this kind. There are certain lines of Bible truth 
over which we are carried in Seminary. Some 
of them, perhaps,* were made deep and clear by a 
forcible professor. Over some of them, perhaps, we 
traveled often and painfully, in view of an examina- 
tion. They have assumed an undue importance in 
our thoughts, and we are tempted to think that 
they must be of great interest to the rest of 
the human race. Yet, in point of fact, that por- 



P ULPIT ILL VSTBA TIOJSTS. 43 

tion of it for whicli we are responsible lias no doubt 
about them, will not comprehend our argumen- 
tation, and feels no connection between it and daily 
life. 

Not only will a man get the most valuable as- 
sistance where every minister has spent some, 
and many a great deal of, time — the selection 
of themes — but he will often get his best points 
and illustrations in intercourse with his people. 
Going among them, with ears open, eyes observant, 
and heart warm, he will see modes of life, hear 
forms of expression, witness human experiences, all 
new to him, familiar to them, the reproduction of 
which will bring him and his message near to them, 
and into their real life. For the sake of impression 
he means to describe a sick-bed or a death-bed. 
Many men go to what they read, or remembered, in 
books. Let him go back to what he saw among 
them. He would represent vice and sin ; and he 
gives a catalogue of vices wliich they know little 
about, at least by his names. Let him call them as 
they do among themselves, and tell them the truth 
regarding them, as he does regarding Christ, the 
great sin-bearer, '' in their own tongue wherein they 



M A NECESSARY BBIDGE, 

were born." His preaching will hare a new force 
and significance to them. It is undeniable that for 
want of this many otherwise most excellent men are 
ineffective all their lives. Their sermons are echoes, 
slightly modified in transmission, of the didactic or 
polemic themes of college and seminary life, or of the 
literature in which the subjects are kept under their 
continued notice. Their wheels are in rapid and 
regular motion, but they do not hite. They hardly 
know what is the matter. Neither do their people. 
ISTow and then, perhaps some one more shrewd 
than the rest asks; '^ Cui hono ! All that being 
so, what is it to me ? What, in fact, do we care 
about it ? " 

Q)) By this means a thoughtful and observant man 
is aided in adapting his methods of preaching to his 
people. Take an average theologian, of bookish 
habits and scholarly tastes, and an average working- 
man, and what a great gulf is fixed between them. 
How embarrassing a long conversation would often 
be to both of them ! It would be a miracle if, on 
merely general principles, and without knowing him, 
the theologian could hit on the language that would 
be clear, and the aspects of truth that would be 



TAKING TROUBLE. 45 

suitable to him. The minister must bridge over 
that gulf. Is it not one of the reasons that account 
for the mass of men that do not go to church, that 
they have no feeling that the talking will be on the 
plane of their lives? Is it not tl^e fact that for a 
long time Methodism made its triumphant and 
blessed progress through the ministrations of com- 
paratively illiterate men ? Is it not the fact that in 
many instances the memory of their success is still so 
strong as to create some prejudice against a learned 
ministry ? What is the remedy for those who are 
edncated, and who cannot go back, if they would, 
to an illiterate condition ? Why, to go among 
our people, learn their ways, modes of thought, 
habits of looking at things, and so acqnire the 
power to speak- to them, and not over their heads. 

You think this involves a world of trouble ! Well, 
Gentlemen, it is for that we are made ministers. If 
we are not willing to take trouble for souls, let us 
leave our places for braver men, and go into politics, 
or law, or trade, or anj^thing that will give us sub- 
stantial results without pains — if there be such a 
sphere. What do we require of our missionaries to 
India? Why, that they learn, with pains and 



46 CBEATING POWER, 

trouble, the language and the idioms of the people, 
so as to be able to speak to them. They are 
useless till that is done. And are not souls in 
Connecticut, Kew Hampshire, and New York, to be 
approached in much the same way as in Gujerat or 
Lodiana ? 

{g) But there is yet another gain, greater, perhaps, 
than either of these — namely, power of impression. 
A man will often pay a visit, where he feels little 
immediate good is to be done, but he says- to him- 
self, "It will bring them under the Grospel next 
Lord's day ; or it will secure their hearing it without 
prejudice, and with a kindly disposition towards the 
messenger." They expect him. They will be vexed 
if he does not call. Shall he stay away because their 
ideas are inadequate ? or shall he go, like the Master ; 
" lest we should offend them ? " Persistent, patient 
effort in a man's home makes the preaching a very 
different thing to him in the pulpit. " He believes 
every word of it — he told it over to me many a time 
in my own house, only not so grandly as he is telling 
it now." Gentlemen, when we wind up our organ 
on Friday and Saturday, and grind out its tunes on 
Sabbath to the people, such is fallen human nature 



MISSED FROM GHUBGK 47 

that a good many think we are just going through 
our professional round, and that when it is done it 
is "done with/' as far as we are concerned. But 
if we come to a man on Monday and press the 
same truth on him, just as earnestly as we 
did on the congregation on Sabbath, be begins 
to think tliere is something in it. One of 
the most successful clergymen I ever knew was 
a good preacher, but would never have been 
distinguished merely as a preacher. Two years 
ago a gentleman of intelligence and influence told 
me this suggestive story of him. ''I was sent to 
school in Belfast," said he, " and my father brouglit 
and introduced me to the Doctor,"^ and provided a 
sitting for me ; " (a good example, by the way, for 
all parents in the like circumstances.) '' I attended 
very well for a couple of months, till I got a little 
knowledge of the town, and then 1 thought one Sun- 
day I would go and hear some one else. So I did. 



* I aUade to the late Rev. Dr. Morgan, of Belfast, Ireland, of 
whom an instructive biography has appeared, under the editor- 
ship of his son — also a faithful minister. No man known to me 
made more effective use of all the gifts he possessed " in the 
work of the ministry.'* 



48 THE LAPSING MAS8E8, 

I^ext morning, as I was on my road to school, I met 
tlie Doctor, on his way to my lodgings. ' William,' 
said he, ' I missed you from chm^ch yesterday, and I 
came romid to see about you.' That fact," said he, 
" that he missed m^, and came to look after me, fixed 
my attendance, perhaps saved me." Gentlemen, we 
are to reverse that maxim of the law, De minimis 
lex non curat, ITothing is too small for our notice, 
if it helps our ministry. I have the pleasure of 
numbering among rny friends a minister, of whose 
usefulness it is impossible to speak in too high terms, 
and whose ways of working I know, because when 
at college 1 had opportunity to observe them."^ He 
is the type, to my mind, of the class of ministers re- 
quired to evangelize our lapsed masses in the great 
cities. He had a plain, small, and inexpensive 
church-buirding, adapted to the people. No man 

* The Rev. William Jolinston, the late efficient Moderator of 
the Irish General Assembly, is still an active and vigorous 
minister, whose unselfish and most patient labor in the cause of 
orphans — among many other public services — have resulted in 
a system, through which every child of the Church, in clerical 
or lay family, when deprived of parents and means, is provided 
with education, home, and Christian care, at the cost of the 
Church— a noble work surely in a country like Ireland. 






CUUK OF SOULS. 49 

could find a pretense for staying away in the incon- 
gruity between his own shabby apj3earance and the 
handsome surroundings in the church-edifice. Many 
of his people were workingmen, who were then paid 
their wages on Saturday night— a bad plan, now 
abandoned in many places in the interest of the 
tempted. My friend knew how great was the danger 
to a man who had spent six long days in a mill, or a 
tenement room converted into a workshop, released 
on a Saturday night, with his week's wages in his 
pocket. His sermons were ready before Saturday 
evening; and about the time when a man might be 
supposed to feel the attractions of the "public- 
house," he sallied forth for a round among such of 
his parishioners as he knew to be " weak.'^ Rapidly 
passing from house to house, with the question, ''Is 
Thomas in ? " " Has "William come home ? " " Where 
is George ? " he bestowed warning, commendation, 
counsel, as the case required, and in fact did every- 
thing short of seeing his endangered sheep to their 
beds, before he sought his own, often at late mid- 
night. Now, this seems very prosaic work — it lias 
few aesthetic attractions for a cultivated man. But 
Thomas, William, and George felt it " In their 



50 GROWING CONGREGATIONS. 

bones " as they went to chnrch next day, and- heard 
their pastor preach. And their wives — why, " Mr. 
Johnston '' was their guardian angel ! For remem- 
ber, the preserving of Thomas is not only help to his 
wife, it is care of the children, is the saving of a 
family, is the hiding of a multitude of sins, and the 
saving of a soul — perhaps many souls — from death."^ 
The congregation which enjoyed such labors is now 
large; .William, Thomas, and George have become 
comfortable, if not wealthy. They paid, their few 
shillings for their pews, when they were poor. They 
paid more shillings as they rose; and well they 
might, for how much the Church helped their ele- 
vation ; and their children are now men and women, 
and bringing their young ones to hear the good man 
who baptized and married their parents. 

This is a form of acquired power which we are in 
danger of losing through our short pastorates. Do we 
sufficiently consider the difference between the bril- 
liant performance of a man who comes from one 
knows not where, to go one knows not whither, and 
the sermon that has behind it twenty years of unself- 

* James v. 20. 



BRIEF PASTOR A TES. 5 1 

isli, faithful friendship to the hearers ? Something 
will be said, later, regarding the connection between 
our current methods of preaching and short pastor- 
ates ; but, in the meantime, I crave leave to emphasize 
the point that ^^ patient continuance in well-doing '^ 
gives a minister's sermons a force that is sui generis / 
" there is," as David said of Goliath's sword, " none 
like that, give it me." Let your fathers tell you of 
the patriarchs of the pulpit, whom they used to hear 
and see ; for to see them — severe as was their dignity 
— was a sermon. Times'have changed, indeed ; but 
there is no reason in the nature of things why this^ 
element of power might not be secured and con- 
served to a far greater degree than at present, if we 
and our congregations were only wise in our gen- 
eration. Why, on our present plan, a boy or girl has 
hardly had time to know the name and look of the 
pastor till he is saying farewell ; and has hardl}^ 
learnt to discriminate between his successor and the 
miscellaneous crowd of men who were " on trials," 
till that successor is also delivering his " Yaledictory." 
AH which, let us hope, a wiser and more spiritual 
community will ultimately change. 

There is one wrong impression which might pos- 



52 GL08E TO THE PEOPLE. 

sibly be caught from the drift of these remarks, 
namely, that personal contact with the people, and 
diligence in the good offices of the ministry, is to 
become a substitute for ability, freshness, and force 
in the pulpit. I do not mean that : I should greatly 
deprecate such an idea. These forms of personal 
contact with the people are urged, not to supplement 
weak, common-place, "milk-and-water" talking (the 
milk often left out), but to accompany, illustrate, 
and enforce vigorous, instructive preaching, and to 
co-operate harmoniously with it in forming character 
and winning souls. When Arnold preached to his 
boys at Rugby, he was listened to all the more 
because he knew his Greek, and would stand no 
nonsense on Monday; and his manly uprightness 
and thoroughness in school made his sermons in 
chapel all the more effective. So there is interaction 
^ between the visiting and the preaching. The visit 
of a preacher is all the more valued because the 
preaching is good ; and the preaching is all the more 
appreciated, because the visit was paid. When men 
and women, with high and yet constantly repressed 
aspirations, quit dry-goods, groceries, and house- 
keeping details, and go to church to hear a sermon. 



DEVOTED MINISTERS. 53 

which they are sure will be to them like a summer 
breeze, or a morning of mountain air, not only from 
what they have heard before, but from what they 
know of the man, his personality mingles itself with 
every sentence he utters ; and when he makes a visit 
at their dwelling, he brings into their home-life 
something of the largeness, nobleness, heavenliness, 
which they link in their' memory with his sermons. 
Such, at least, is my ideal; how far it is from being 
realized, all men know. But, poor and feeble as we 
are, we should be still poorer, if we did not hold up 
before us the conception of a genuine, consecrated 
ministry, including all the life of a man who has 
received, like Timothy, the Charisma^ " the gift," 
and who gives himself ^' wholly to these things." "^ 

In conclusion, let it be said that all this argument 
is based on the assumption that the minister is a 
thorough and good man. If he be only veneered, 



* How forcible are these words written to Timothy (1 Tim. 
iv. 15) : ravra jLtEXsra, sv rovroi^ i6Qi, *^ let these things be 
thy care, be in these things." What things ? The reading of 
the Scriptures to the people, the exhortation (sermon), and the 
doctrine, or teaching (lecture, or expository prearliing), v. 13. 
See EUicott on the passage. 



54: GENUINE MEN, 

or varnislied, or gilt ; if he is one thing in the pnlpit, 
and another out of it ; if his sermons are no part of 
his life, but only oranges stnck on a pine tree ; 
if he is a mere official person giving so much pleas- 
ant sound for so much money and position ; if he 
is only an artist, selling his wares ; then the less he 
comes among the people the better. He may wisely 
act on the plan, Procul este ! profani. But if he be 
solid wood throughout (and it is the solid and hard 
wood that takes a polish), then the nearer the people 
come to him the better for moral and spiritual 
influence. And the experience of the Church is 
that the pastor effects the most in the end who 
comes into closest personal contact with his charge. 
JSTo amount of organizing, no skill in creating 
machinery and manipulating "committees" is a 
substitute for this. Who feels the power of a 
tear in the eye of a committee ? The minister who 
would be like the Master, must go and, like Him, 
lay the warm, kindly hand on the leper, the 
diseased, the wretched. He must touch the blind 
eyes with something from himself. The tears mast 
be in his o\vn eyes over the dead who are to be 
raised to spiritual life. Jesus is our great examplar. 



THE MAN OF SOBEO WS. 5 5 

"Standing where I stand, and weeping where 1 
weep, he enters by the* openings which grief has 
made into my heart, and gently makes it all his own. 
As my brother, he insinuates himself into me throuo^h 
the emotion of our common nature, that so I may be 
borne up with him into the regions of spiritual light 
and liberty. He takes hold of me by my sorrow, that 
I may get hold of him for deliverance from my. 
sin." * "It is enough for the disciple that he be as 
his master." f " Let this mind be in you which was 
also in Christ Jesus." ^ 

* Aruot's " Roots and Fruits of the Christian Life.'* 
t Matt. X. 25. . 

t Phil. ii. 5. 



LECTURE III. 



I]sr the imperfect and divided condition of the 

Church of Christ, her faithful ministers have many 

temptations to tm^n from their main theme, and not 

a few difficulties in the way of prosecuting their 

. purely spiritual work. 

The Church, for example, is parted into sections, 
and the division has not always been made or main- 
tained in enlightened love. A man is tempted to be 
sectional in his preaching, to dwell on what has 
relative, controversial, or denominational impor- 
tance, so as to distort the proportions of the body 
of truth."^' It will thus come to pass that the greater, 
admitted, undisputed, common truths receive cursory 
treatment, while strength and time are laid out in 
emphazising those which seem to constitute the 

* Our fathers used to speak of a '' body of divinity/' Wlietlier 
they saw it or not, there is something very suggestive in the 
phrase. Every member in my body has not an ec^ual im|)or- 



'' OUR POSITION.'' 67 

'' reason to be" of one's particular branch. And it 
is not perhaps unreasonable to assume that the 
smaller the denominationj and the smaller the 
apparent reasons for its distinct organization, the 
greater will be this temptation. An intelligent and 
candid man, insulated by a few beliefs from those to 
whom he otherwise belongs, can hardly help feeling 
as if called on by implication for a defense of his 
separation. So the essential truths, by which the 
souls of men live, may be pushed out of their com- 
manding position, and a generation may grow up to 
whose Christian life they become too little necessary. 
Denominational truth has its necessary place. Great 
discretion is needed to confine it strictly thereto. 

Yehement controversies have the same tendency. 
Just as in the siege of a city an accident may render 
an insignificant tower the key of the position, for the 
sake of which, for the time, the rest is comparatively 
forgotten, so a doctrine from being controverted may 



tance ; every one is useful for some purpose in its own place, 
and it would be mischievous to take any one from its place and 
apply it to another purpose than that for which it was formed 
and intended. So every truth of God has its place, and we are 
to keep it there, and give it its relative prominence. 



58 ^ NEGmSSARY EVIL. 

have given it disproportionate attention, and may 
continue to receive it long after' the real conflict is 
over ; for the echoes of great pulpits, like those of a 
trumpet among the mountains, are frequent and far- 
resounding. Meantime the positive, uncontroverted 
truths are let alone ; and a truth forgotten is of little 
more value to any one than a truth disbelieved. We 
shall not be able to dispense, for a long time to come, 
with conflict of thought, especially where men may 
be expected to feel most deeply ; and in this, indeed, 
is the valid defense of our symbols, creeds, and con- 
fessions. It would be delightful to live in the open 
air, and on the broad savannas of general truth, if 
we were only let alone. But sophists and "philoso- 
phers," and "scientists" and crotchety men, "even of 
our own selves," arise and attack us, and we are 
obliged to throw up -defenses against them, in the 
shape of articles, and doctrinal positions, so as to keep 
our ground, and transmit our heritage to our children. 
As they shift the attack, we have to set up barriers ; 
hence our symbols are often bulky, and men do not 
want to take them down lest it invite- the enemy 
again. And the misfortune is that the Church is 
blamed for encasing herself in a line of fortiflca- 



THE CHILBBEN'S BREAD 69 

tions by the very " unreasonable men " whose 
action made the bulwarks necessary and numerous. 
While this necessity remains, the most we can do is 
to guard against the dangers. The truth which 
we set out in battle-array against a foe may not be 
the bread with which to feed the children of God. 
"Without are dogs " that keep up a continual bark- 
ing, and we have to assure the timid jlock within of 
safety ; but we must not, while silencing the noise, 
forget to feed the sheep with food '' convenient for 
them." 

Those early and heroic preachers who built up the 
primitive Church did not escape these distracting 
annoyances, and they did not shrink from inevitable 
conflict ; but neither did they allow themselves to be 
diverted from the work of positive truth-telling. 
When they mention Jesus Christ, they can say of 
Him, "Whom we preach, warning every man, and 
teaching every man, that we may present every man 
perfect in the day of Christ." Col. i. 28. This avowal 
of the Apostle Paul ought to be engraven on every 
preacher's memory, and burned into his conscience. It 
is Jesus " Whom we (solemnly) preach " {uaray- 
ysXojuev) for the message is momentous in the 



60 REPENT AND BELIEVE. 

highest degree ; belief of it is life, rejection of it is 
death. "Warning " (yov^etovvre^ — putting it to the 
-KOf?) " every man, and teaching every man." The 
two words cover the ground. Men are sinful. Nor 
is this an evil chance that has happened to them. 
They are to be blamed for it, and to be shown their 
sin. And they are to be taught, to be shown the way 
of forgiveness and life, that they may walk in it. 
The two words well correspond to the actual case of 
the earliest apostolic preaching. " Eepent and be 
baptized (as believers), every one of you, in the name 
of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins." (Acts ii. 
38) ; or '* Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that 
your sins may be blotted out." Acts iii. 19. Men 
need to be shown their sin ; hence, " warning every 
man :" they need to be shown the Saviour ; hence 
" teaching every man." 

Nor is there any latitude allowed, as if some could 
dispense with the warning. " Every man " needs 
it, for every man is a sinner ; and if it be true that 
too many lay down their Christian profession with 
fatal facility, may it not be because they took it up 
without any duly pungent sense of sin and ill-desert ? 
They had no such' conviction as left a permanent 



GOOD CONFESSION 61 

impress on their minds of the essential evil and hate- 
fulness of sin. In a natural reaction from that style 
of teaching that- made such and such exercises, and 
so much conviction a sine qita non to admission 
to the Church, is there not danger of overlooking 
that reasoning of righteousness, temperance, and 
judgment to come, in which Paul engaged ? We 
cannot, indeed, too eagerly or too frequently cry, 
" Come to Jesus." But to make this call intelligent 
and emphatic, we must needs assign Scriptural 
reasons. We must not scruple to say, " Come ! for 
you have sinned. You are guilt}^ If you do 
not, you will die ; for the wages of sin is death." 
This carries the step of '^ professing religion " out 
of the region of mere sentiment; "it rests it on 
conviction. ^Ve utter an invitation to One who 
is indeed " altogether lovely ; '' but we give it, 
and without disguise, to all who are altogether 
unlovely, and whom we are to help to this self 
knowledge. 

"I really felt," said one of no common acuteness, 
" that when I joined the Church, I had done a most 
gracious thing, and laid the Church under great 
obligations to me, so eagerly had I been entreated 



62 Q UALITY NOT Q UANTITT. 

• ■ 
to take this, step." They who " join " "^ in this 

temper are likely enough to^ require " humoring," 
indulgence, and attentions innumerable. Have they 
not obliged the minister, elders, and deacons, by 
consenting to "join?" Obliged men by taking de- 
liverance from guilt and hell at the hand of a com- 
passionate Redeemer, who bought the deliverance 
with His life ! Let us not be afraid to put the facts 
as they are ; let us be true to the truth of things. 
We are not " of the schools," this or that. W^e are 
teachers of Bible-truth. Let us be pre-Eaphaelite, 
showing men sin, guilt, danger, loss, ruin, as they are. 
We may draw fewer on this plan than others seem 
to do ; but our net will not so often break. The quan- 
tity is less important here than the quality. The 
stream of Christian profession may seem narrower on 
this plan, but it will be deeper. Church-members 
will know where they stand, will have positive convic- 

* Is it not possible to get a better pbrase than this for ad- 
vancing in the enjoyment of Christian privilege ? for surely 
the word misleads, at least in the case of multitudes who were 
born into the Church, had their rights owned in baptism, and 
who grew. up under the Church's teaching? A young man 
do'es not '' join" the land of his birth the first time he registers 
or casts his vote. 



NO OTHER NAME. 63 

tioPaS, and instead of requiring perpetual incense 
from the Cliurcli, as from a community they have 
patronized, they will rather feel like the returned 
prodigal : " I am ho more worthy to be called thy 
son ; make me as one of thy hired servants." And 
when the ring, and robe, and shoes, and kiss, and 
feast, are given them — such gifts as no slave could 
receive and be a slave — they will know that they are 
not of debt, but of grace. 

IsTor is this double work incladed in preach 
ing Christ a thing ^' done and done with " so 
soon as men have "received the atonement." It is 
to be continuous. Till the ear of the saint is closed 
in death, this sound is to fall upon it. It is not one 
law that condemns a sinner, and another that guides 
a saint. I^or does a believer cease to have to do 
with the law, or with the sin it reveals or condemns. 
He is pardoned, adopted, saved ; but he is a sinner 
till " death is* swallowed up in victory." " Sinner " 
is the substantive for him, qualify it as you will by 
foregoing words. " That we may present " "^ (not 
as a sacrifice, but as a piece of work to be approved) 

^ Col. 1. 28. 



64 CEBIST THE SUN. 

every man "perfect" {reXsioVy see Matt. v. 48) "in 
Christ." Maturity of Christian life is thus acquired 
by " every man." The law which was written on 
the heart, and obeyed in the earthly life of Jesus, is 
written also on the heart of the saint. He delights 
to do God's will. • Tliis is the aim of a true minister. 
Like Epaphras, he will be always "laboring fervently" 
(^aj/Govi^opievo^) in prayers, that his charge may 
stand perfect and complete in all the will of God." 
(Col. IV. 12.) So says the noble and unselfish Paul, 
" To which end T also labor striving " (again 
ayGDvi^opLSvo^) " according to his working who 
worketh in me mightily. (Ch. i. 29.) 

Here, then. Gentlemen, is the commanding theme 
of your preaching. Around the sun of this central 
Christ-doctrine, all other truths revolve as planets or 
as satellites. Why did He come ? God • pitied sin- 
ners. Why must He die ? " Without shedding of 
blood there is no remission." Why do we need Him ? 
We are dead in sin, under the law's curse. What are 
we to do with our sin ? Carry it to the cross. How 
can it be removed ? " The blood of Jesus Christ 
cleanseth from all sin." What shall men believe? 
That Christ is able and willing to sav^. To whom 



JESUS ONLY, 65 

shall they go ? To God in Christ. In whom shall 
they trust? A personal, living Jesus who was dead, 
and dieth no more. How shall they loathe their sin ? 
By looking at the crucified Christ. How shall they 
vanquisli it? In the strength of the risen Jesus. 
Ah ! but the way is long and hard, and the struggle 
is unutterably wearying ! Even so. There is no help 
for it ^^but to run with patience the race set before 
us, looking to Jesus." Men need to be awakened. 
The Crucified One is the most awakening sight in the 
universe. There is no attraction like that of the 
cross, if men are to be won. I^othing will melt a sin- 
ner, if his heart is to be softened, like a pierced 
Saviour (Zech. xii. 10) ; nothing to give life, if a 
dead soul is to be quickened, but the touch of the 
living Saviour ; nothing to sustain, if a living soul is to 
be fed, but the living bread ; none to carry through, 
if men are to conquer, but He who hath loved us. 
" Culture" is one of the cant phrases of our time. 
Gentlemen, as preachers we are to promote Christian 
culture, by bringing the dead branches to the living 
Vine, that, grafted into it, without priest or sacra- 
ment, or a rag of human righteousness between, 
the life in Him may enter them; and by keeping 



66 COMPLETE IN HIM. 

tliem, as far as teaching and example can do it, abid- 
ing in Him, that they may bring forth fruit. You 
would be " edifying" preachers ? What does, the fig- 
ure in the word suggest ? Why, you set men on the 
foundation and you build them up on Him. You 
would be useful preachers ? Then, remember, in the 
day when the fire shall try every man's work of what 
sort it is, -the eloquence, the tact, the poetry, the phi- 
losophy, the curious felicity of words, the manifold 
gifts and graces that were not directed to keeping 
before men Christ_ as Saviour, Lord, Master, Law- 
giver, Example — not a priest only, to snatch us from 
pain and miserable ruin, but a King to rule us and 
recover us to God, " a priest u;pon his throne^'' — will 
be among the wood, hay, and stubble. Ah ! many of 
us, one fears, who are applauded now, will be poor 
then in comparison with obscure and lowly preachers 
who preached Christ, and whose work will shine 
resplendent, as gold and precious stones, in the light 
of the great White Throne ! 

"- But," says st>me one, " I shall be precluded from 
a large portion of Scripture by this rule." Far from 
it. Look at the fine, fanciful, spiritualizing of the 
historical books to be found in a large class of writers, 



THE GENTBAL FIGURE. 67 

whose school dates from Origen. Do not their very 
exaggerations prove the reality of Christ in them all ? 
Look at the epistle to the Hebrews, full of Christ ! 
But who understands it, if ignorant of the Penta- 
teuch ? The dreary records of apostasy, humiliation, 
partial penitence, and recovery of the Jews, seem far 
enough from this great theme. ,But they only seem 
so. What is their lesson to us? " IsTeither let us 
tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted him." 
1 Cor. X. 9. The Psalms are often meditative, 
experimental, sometimes imprecatory of stern wrath 
on the Psalmist's wicked foes, because external pros- 
perity was then the sign of divine favor, and when 
the sacred writer calls for their humiliation and ruin, 
he asks that God would declare, in the only language 
then understood — that he would prove by the only 
test then recognized — His displeasure against them. 
But have we no Messianic Psalms ? It is true the 
■ prophets often seem obscure, abrupt, and unintelligi- 
ble, mainly because we have given them too little 
study. Isaiah was not hopelessly such to Dr. Addi- 
son Alexander, nor is Daniel to Dr. Pusey : and they 
spake of Him. '' To him gave all the prophets 
witness." 



68 SCRIPTURE EXPOSITION. 

And this suggests the wisdom of taking to a 
larger extent than we do, chapters, or parts of chap- 
ters, and expounding them. "We set out bits of 
Scripture in great beauty, like the separate tiles of 
a mosaic floor. Let us be expository to a greater 
extent, and the people will have the opportunity to see 
the pattern. We are liable to distort separate texts, 
and to misplace their messages. Let us help the 
people to look at groups of truths as they are set side 
by side by the Holy Ghost. " When my own mind 
is not very full,'' said a useful preacher, " I like to 
get hold of a large piece of Scripture." IN'ot that an 
honest and effective expositor will find or make this 
work easier than textual or topical preaching ; for it 
requires thorough study and honest effort to bring 
words written to Jews, or Christians eighteen hun- 
dred years ago, into the plane of our life. But it can 
be done ; and when done well, an intelligent and 
devout hearer will be apt to feel that he has been 
addressed by the Lord, more directly than in many 
sermons equally true and effective. 

That some definite idea may be conveyed on this 
subject, let a few sentences be here devoted to its 
consideration. 



FALSE IDEALS. 69 

Expository preaching does not mean a rambling 
paraphrase of a chapter or a portion of a ^chapter, 
with a dexterous turn given, now and then, to the 
inspired words, so that they shall hit current events. 
K^or does it mean a devout meditation, such as one 
finds in the practical notes of Thomas Scott's " Com- 
mentary" — admirable as they are. IsTor does it 
mean a subtle, ingenious twisting of the facts or 
minor incidents of Scripture, so that they shall all 
be made to disclose vital, spiritual truth. The illus- 
trations of this style of Bible-use are abundant in the 
mystics, and in various types of modern teachers, of 
undoubted good intentions, but whose "readings" 
suggest to ordinary men that the divine word is 
elastic, .capable of sustaining anything an ingenious 
fancy suggests. They are continually reading be- 
tween the lines. Nor is true exposition perfectly 
illustrated in saintly Matthew Henry, or a class of 
works modeled on the plan of his, where various 
interpretations of the same Scripture are given with 
devout reflections founded on each — "if it be the 
true interpretation." A certain feeling of insecurity 
attends an intelligent hearer, under this instruction. 
" The fire-brands and the foxes employed by Samson, 



70 '' extempore:* 

according to some . authorities, mean "^ — so and so. 
" If this be correct, then we may learn " such and 
such lessons. '^ Or, according to others, they repre- 
sent" so and so. '^ If this is the correct rendering, 
then we may learn " such and such lessons. Lessons 
taught in this loose fashion are felt to be hypothetical, 
like their basis. The ^^if" of their premises runs 
on into their conclusions. Nor, finally, is the ex- 
pository preaching, to which we give hearty com- 
mendation, a general godly talking concerning a 
particular chapter, when almost any other would 
have served equally well, which .begins nowhere in 
particular, which is interspersed with feeble appeals — 
'' my brethren, is this your happy case ? " and of 
which one feels, when it is over, that there was no 
particular reason why it should have stopped there 
more than anywhere else. Such "expounding'' has 
brought into disrepute the true "reasoning out of 
the Scriptures," "^ for which we plead, just as loose, 
inconsecutive, feeble preaching — "extempore," per- 
haps, in the literal sense — has brought discredit on 
the method in the pulpit, which men almost univer- 
sally employ at the bar, on the platform, and in the 
* Acts xvii. 3. 



ONE DIBEGTION. 71 

Senate — a discredit so deep that it is said that 
ministers preaching without noteS have sometimes 
placed paper before them, and affected to use it, 
thus by a " pious fraud " saving the people from the 
indifference they would have felt if they had sup- 
posed their pastor merely talking to them out of a 
clear head and a full heart. 

By expository preaching we mean that in which a 
minister, having, by the aid of grammar, dictionary, 
and all proper helps, learned for himself what mean- 
ing the Holy Ghost intended to convey in the passage 
he has in hand, and then what uses we ought, in 
harmony with the rest of divine teaching, to make 
of it, and having filled his own understanding, and 
warmed his own heart with this truth, tells it to his 
people, with clearness, simplicity, force, and fervor. 
They are supposed to have their Bibles in hand, to 
examine his references where they are adduced as 
proofs. The selection should be so made that the 
parts of the passage shall have a certain unity and 
concentration of purpose. One deep impression 
should be made. Now, it may be alleged , that this 
is effected in substance in a sermon: and happily 
many sermonizers do fall into an expository method. 



Y2 'FOR EXAMPLE. 

But we are more sure, it must be admitted^ of making 
the impression the Lord intended, when we give the 
truth in the exact settings in which inspiration has 
placed it. Let me illustrate. A minister wishes to 
preach on the sin of robbing God in the matter of J 
property. He can get a text in Malachi,^ of great 
force and pungency. Scriptural illustrations abound, 
and he may preach a very useful, and often quite 
needful, sermon. Or the same preacher may take 
eleven verses of the Acts of the Apostles,t and give 
an exposition of the miracle of judgment in the 
opening of the Christian dispensation, corresponding 
to that by which God w^arned the Jews in tlie matter 
of Achan, as they entered on their promised land. 
He sets forth the temper, condition, generosity of 
the converts ; shows how a spirit of liberality was in 
the air ; how soon credit came to be thought of in 
the Church ; how two persons conspired — a degree of 
guilt greater than individual sin — for a man w^ill 
often do what only a more hardened transgressor can 
talk of ; how the iniquity was exposed; the darkness 
of the crime and punishment all the more apparent 
standing out in relief against the grace being enjoyed 

* Mai. in. 8. t Acts v. 1-11. 



MENTAL PICTURES. 73 

and the mercy being displaj^ed. What is the gain of 
this method ? Why, the memory is charged with 
facts, instead of abstract principles. A large portion 
of God's word is presented ; and so the Holy Ghost, 
I humbly think, is honored. A vivid idea is given 
of the condition of the primitive church, and of the 
authority with which the risen Lord clothed his 
saints. All the impression is, moreover, made that 
could be expected from a disquisition on robbing 
God. And finally, if the expositor has done his 
work faithfully and effectively, whenever his hearers 
afterwards read that section of the apostolic history, 
it will be luminous before memory, understanding, 
and imagination.* 

There are some considerations in favor of con- 
secutive exposition, as of Epistles or sacred biog- 
raphies. Thoughtful hearers will be interested. 

* Miracles, Parables, Psalms, no less tlian incidents and argu- 
ments, admit of effective treatment in this way. The well-known 
volumes of the present Archbishop of Dublin (including his ex- 
position of the " Epistles to the Seven Churches ") are scholarly, 
honest, sober-minded, and generally safe, while they show what 
good use may be made of classical and patristic literature in 
ascertaining or in illustrating the miud of the spirit. In entirely 
different styles Leighton (on Peter) aiad Candlish (on 1 Cor. xv.) 
are masters. 



74 FEED THE FLOCK. 

They are not indeed the majority in most congrega- 
tions ; but they are the most worthy of consideration. 
They are the belts that convey and redirect power. 
There is a generation that does not relish this con- 
secutive teaching, that misses the joy of guessing 
what is to be talked of. The younger persons who 
frequent city churches, particularly in the evenings, 
and whose deepest feelings are not interested in the 
service, do not like w^hat assumes on their part 
memory, which they clo not exercise, attention 
which they divide with many other matters, and 
attendance which is with them a matter of chance. 
But one is hardly to turn away from a useful method 
of edifying the Church, because the " casuals " do 
not value it. We are here more concerned about the 
manna for the host of Israel, than the taste of the 
camp-followers.^ There are many incidental ad- 

* The lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, by Chalmers, 
offer a splendid example in one style. The " Life of David " 
has been frequently used for expository purposes, nowhere more 
effectively surely than in the recent volume of Dr. Wm. M. 
Taylor, the vividness, discrimination, and devoutness of whose- 
lectures entitle them to the careful examination of students, and 
should commend them to the attention of general readers. In 
an entirely different style may be mentioned " The Royal 



LIGHT AND HEAT. 75 

vantages attendant on the expository method. Two 
only we shall mention. 

{a) "When the fire of Christian feeling is burning 
low on the altar of our hearts, far more than b}^ any 
vivid pictures of divine things, or fervid exhortation, 
will it be kindled and fed by contact with the very 
word of God, set forth in its native force, and allowed 
to speak for itself. This has been the experience of 
the best minds. 

(5) The power of producing able, ornate, finished 
sermons in the essay form is to most men limited. 
They must needs go back on their store. Suppose 
Bacon, Fuller, Macaulay, Lamb, or even John Foster, 
to have been under obligation to give an essay twice 
or thrice a week, along with all other duties such as 
ministers must do, and this for years, how soon a 
change of parish would be desirable ! But we venture 
to think there is no such limit to the power of in- 
structing, edifying, and deeply interesting a congrega- 
tion for many years, on the method of making, say 

Preacher/' a series of lectures, not continuous, on Ecclesiastes. 
Their method, however, should only be followed by men assured 
of their possession of such poetic faculty and scriptural anchor- 
age as Dr. James Hamilton enjoyed. 



76 THE HiaHEST THEME8. 

one-lialf tlie addresses expository. For a minister 
doing this duty conscientiously acquires a fullness of 
mind from his Bible which facilitates sermonizing 
and every other department of his work. ]N"or is he 
so liable on this plan to get into a rut of thinking 
and teaching as on the ordinary plan of preparing 
sermons. 

The principle that positive truth regarding Christ 
is to be the staple of our teaching, excludes, I humbly 
think, much foreign matter that finds its way into the 
pulpit. I do not refer to social, or aesthetic, or purely 
political matters. Touching this last, it is right to say 
that in days gone by the ministers of this land were 
the instructors and leaders of the public in civil aftairs. 
This is sometimes forgotten now by noisy and inter- 
ested demagogues who object to ministerial expres- 
sion of political views opposed to theirs : but the 
ministers of America inspired with their lofty 
thoughts, and prayed into success, the Revolutionary 
struggle. Crises may come when fidelity to Christ 
demands political teaching from ministers. But these 
are extraordinary. We speak of ordinary conditions 
of life. Our observation applies to a different class 
of discussions. 



LET THEM ALONE. 77 

There are, and always have been men everywhere, 
trying their strength upon Christianity. We are 
under no obligation to turn aside to notice every 
assailant, and endeavor to set his argument in its 
proper position, so as to be able, in the intelligent 
judgment of our hearers, to upset it. There are 
many men undertaking to deal with Darwinism, or 
w^ith the views of Tyndall and Huxley, in their 
pulpits, who seem to me to be wasting their power. 
Think, Gentlemen, for a moment of the most intel- 
ligent congregations to which we ordinarily preach ; 
how many men are there in them who could intelli- 
gently state the philosophical views and scientific 
opinions of such men as Professor Tyndall ? Are there 
twentj^, or fifteen, or ten, or five ? In many cases none. 
It seems to me a waste of energy to be compelled, first 
of all, to set up a fortification in the name of some 
man, explain to the congregation what you are ham- 
mering at, and then proceed to overthrow it. As a 
general thing, we may allow those things to take care 
of themselves in their own plane. AVe do the best 
we can when we set forth the truth in the way in 
which God presents it to us. I do not wish to be 
understood, in making this statement, as decrying or 



78 WEAT MEN WANT. 

depreciating in the least the most valuable and emi^ 
nent labors of men who, as professors in colleges, as 
editors and writers, deal with these inquirers and 
objections. They are in their proper place ; we owe 
a debt of gratitude to them ; and we need not fear to 
leave the matter in their hands. They will deal with 
it, and effectively. If I, a minister, were to preach 
on political matters, it is not likely I could get a 
hearing from the editors and politicians. They 
know, or suppose themselves to know, much more 
about these things than I do ; and have I any right 
to suppose that I shall be able to edify college pro- 
fessors and learned men by dabbling, in the pulpit, 
with their abstruse scientific questions ? Why, they 
know these topics much better than I can pretend to 
do : and if they are wise, they would be glad of a 
little rest from them on the Lord's Day. Let them 
have ifc. Have I any reason to suppose that I 
shall be able to present the attractions of the theater 
in the pulpit, on the Lord's Day, in such a manner as 
will satisfy the ordinary theater-goers of the city? 
Every night they can have them in far more fascinat- 
ing fashion than I can offer. Just as little reason 
have I to suppose that I shall attract scientific un- 



COMMENDING THE TR UTH, 79 

believers by scientific expositions from the pulpit. 
But there are certain questions everlastingly asked 
by the human soul — deep, grave questions — which it is 
for us to answer, not as of our research or inquiry, 
not on our authority, but ministerially, as messengers 
delivering a message, as embassadors bringing terms 
from the Lord God Almighty. We have to make 
known Jesus Christ ; we have to declare a revealed 
way of life, and to win assent to it on the divine 
authority. We need, that we worthily make this 
presentation, meekness and grace, manly courage and 
fidelity. A short time ago it was my lot to pass a 
few days in the extreme north of the State of 
Michigan. While I was there, I met my country- 
man, the Govornor-Greneral of Canada, who made a 
visit to the place. At the fort of Sault Ste. Marie, a 
salute of seventeen guns was fired in honor of His 
Excellency — guns never to be pointed, let us hope, 
towards Canada in any other way. All were delighted 
with the Governor. We were all thorough Americans, 
with a due appreciation of our national advantages, 
and their immense superiority to monarchical institu- 
tions. The grace, the ease, the intelligence, the 
affability, and the courtesy exliibited among us pro- 



80 OCrn ROYAL MASTER. 

duced a deep feeling of admiration and respect for 
the representative of the British Government. There 
at least nothing was thought of bnt the good side of 
royalty and nobility, and nothing spoken of but the 
satisfaction of mutual friendship. But, Gentlemen, 
if we would but think of it, we bear the Commission 
of a King, our Saviour, far above all worldly digni- 
ties, and we plead for Him and represent Him to 
men. With w^hat love and devotion ought His 
presence to inspire us ! and w^ith what courage, 
dignity, and confidence we should speak in His 
name to men! Oh that we may have given us so 
to labor that His holy cause suffer no harm at our 
hands ! 



LECTURE IV. 



So far. Gentlemen, the argument running through 
these observations has been of this kind : The Church 
being as we have represented it, what should its 
ministry be? Again, the aim and design of the 
ministry being as we have represented them, by 
what means should its work be prosecuted, and what 
place does the sermon occupy to related and auxiliary 
agencies ? And if we have ascertained generally the 
plan of preaching, what, in view of the Church's 
nature, and the purposes of the ministry, ought to 
be the themes of the pulpit, and what their proper 
treatment ? 

We have now before us, in a general way, the work 
of a preacher, or, more exactly, of a pastor ; and before 
coming to the processes of making and delivering a 
sermon, the previous question may be fitly put and 
discussed in this hour — what preparation can we 
make for the work of preaching ? 



82 PRE8ER YE HEAL TH. 

Physical considerations are not despicable, as many 
a feeble-bodied preacher knows. You cannot deter- 
mine the strength of your chests, or the vigor of your 
constitutions ; but you can conserve what you have 
received, by proper food, little enough of it, pure air, 
and sufficient exercise. Charles Simeon, I remember, 
told his young men that the first requisite of true 
hard reading was that they should take good care of 
the third mile-stone out of Cambridge, walking out 
every day, going round it, and making sure that no 
one had carried it away. I^o one can prescribe just 
what another ought to do. I had much good advice 
given me gratuitously wdien I was doing the full 
w^ork of a teacher, and the full work of a student, 
when the only reply I could have made must have 
been, Wecessitas non habet legem. But, so far as it 
is possible, let nature alone, and reserve your physical 
energies for the time when you will be expected to 
be always at home to receive callers, and always 
abroad among your people, and at the same time to 
produce sermons, addresses, speeches, lectures, and 
" remarks," not to say articles, as birds do their 
songs. 

A minister ourfit to be a well-educated man, in 



AI^ EDUCATED MAN. 83 

those branches of human learning that are not pro- 
fessional, or rather, that are common to all the pro- 
fessions. The reasons are obvious. A man may be 
spiritual and theologically well-in strutted, whose 
orthography varies from the popular standard, whose 
grammar is uncertain, and whose reading in profane 
history goes little farther back than the Declaration 
of Independence. But the mass of mankind will 
doubt the capacity of a teacher in religious things, 
wdio is conspicuously deficient in common education. 
Have you noticed that our Lord, lowly as was His 
home in N^azareth, is never criticised for lack of such 
propriety, but, on the contrary, that his knowledge 
of " letters " ^ excited the amazement of his hearers ? 
The prejudices against God's message are already so 
many that w^e ought to do nothing to justiiy or in- 
crease them, to omit nothing that we can do for their 
conquest. Even the writing of a good hand is not 
a despicable accomplishment. Gentlemen, for many 
will form an estimate of your taste, culture, and edu- 
cation, from your letter, before they have an oppor- 
tunity to learn the solid qualities of your heads and 
hearts. 

* John vii. 15. 



84 mTELLIOENGE BEQUIBED. 

It does not at all follow because a minister does 
not parade learning in tlie pulpit that he is with- 
out occasion to use it. The mass of the people 
have a good education within reach, and many 
avail themselves of the opportunity. All the ques- 
tions of the day are discussed in the popular 
magazines, newspapers, and serials. Multitudes get 
that little, dangerous knowledge which enables 
them to ask questions. ITone are held back by 
veneration. Reverence for institutions or for tra- 
ditions does not restrain our young people from 
bold inquiry. We must be so far abreast of the 
current of general thought and literature as to be 
able to answer intelligently, and with discrimina- 
tion. There is an intercourse with capable and 
intelligent men to which we are called, and from 
which we should never shrink — it is an oppor- 
tunity for usefulness — in Boards, Committees, and 
the great work of education, and in which all 
the acquirements we have can be utilized. A min- 
ister conspicuously deficient in intelligence, how- 
ever devoted he may be, would soon lose his 
legitimate influence. He would be spoken of as 
a good creature, or as they say in Scotland — " a 



CONFIDENCE COMMANDED. 85 

^'ood body." It is always a loss to tlie cause 
of religion to create the impression tliat it only 
gets hold of the weaklings. It is always a gain, 
where it is seen that a man can be at once strong 
in common sense, vigorous in mind, well-informed, 
a king among men, fitted to rule by force of mind 
and weight of character, and at the same time 
habitually bowing in lowliness before the cross 
of the Lord Jesus. Grod forbid that ever the 
Protestant clergy should come to be what the 
priests of Homanism and of the Greek Church 
in too many instances have become, in mental 
training, and capacity for afiairs, " the lowest of 
the people." We are for teaching and preaching. 
It is to be remembered that a quotation from the 
Bible will not always be an answer. It will some- 
times be a ])eiitio jprincipii. Ton will be told 
there are previous questions: how do we know 
yours to be the meaning, and how do we know 
it to be a revelation ? 

It is commonly believed that for the purposes of 
composition, mastery of our Englisli tono-ue, and 
cultivation of taste, a knowledge of the Greek and 
Latin classics is essential, tlie word " classics" being 



86 CLASSICS FOB CLEBGYMEN. 

commonly limited to the Pagan writers. In thi^ 
free atmosphere it may be permitted me to say — 
without being roasted as a literary heretic — that we 
have possibly overrated this department of educa- 
tion^ and that the suggestions that come to boys in 
the reading of Ovid, Lucian, Horace, and Sophocles, 
do more evil than is commonly thought"^ — evil 
enough to counterbalance the intellectual gain. But 
there are other classics than the heathen ; and it 
would be an omen of good if candidates for the 
ministry at least took Eusebius, TertuUian, and John 
Chrysostom, and others of a noble band, to whom we 



* The writer does not anude mainly to impure associations, 
but to tlie mythological suggestions. How natural to a reflecting 
boy — ^possibly not an adept in the evidences of Christianity — to 
say to himself, "As sincerely as we believe in our religion, these 
cultivated men believed in this legendary dreaming. So coming 
races may look back on our superstition." It is no answer to say 
that sooner or later he must know this fact. Here he does more 
than know it. His mind is held down to it for the most impres- 
sible years of his life, and the years in which reason and con- 
science are needed for restraint and guidance. The writer 
declares what he knows when saying that mischief is often 
done here. Intelligent Bible-teaching ought to be given con- 
currently with more than common earnestness. 



THE LANGUAGES OF SCRIPTURE. 87 

of the reformed free churches have given none too 
much attention.^ 

There have been able and most successful min- 
isters with " small Latin and less Greek ; " but that 
is no reason for ministers missing the knowledge — 
when it is accessible — that would enable them readily 
to consult the Hebrew and Greek originals, under- 
stand the point of a critical exegesis^ and appreciate 
Winer's ITew Testament Grammar, or Trench's 
Synonyms. We say readily : one hears the Hebrew 
Bible read by theological students with a slow 
deliberateness that is not all born of reverence for 
the sacred text, and which suggests that (as we soon 
cease to do what we do with difficulty) the after 
references to the book will not be frequent or 
enthusiastic. Men who have only skimmed the 
school-books, or been squeezed through, ought not to 



* The experiment now in progress in Lafayette CoUege, at tlie 
cost of Mr. Benjamin Douglass, witli the enlightened co-opera- 
tion of Professors March, Owen, and Ballard, is not only full of 
interest, but full of hope, on other grounds than those indicated 
in the text. We have nothing to lose by the raising of the 
question, Whose are the Fathers f (See an admirable volume 
with this title— London : Longmans, Green & Co. — by the Rev. 
John Harrison, in review of the claims of the Anglo-Catholics.) 



88 DO NOT RATIONALIZE. 

count their present condition a finality. To carry 
on one's own reading will be a valuable means of 
culture, an agreeable change of work, and will 
secure a permanent mental possession. 

For, remember, that the great business of your life 
is to be the exegesis of the holy Word. You may 
not call it by that name to the people : call it 
opening up the Scriptures, reasoning out of them, 
anything you will, only provided you have the 
thing. To know^, with the aid of grammar, dic- 
tionary, collation, and examination of the argument, 
what the Spirit of God intended to convey in a 
passage, is a first requisite to honest, faithful, and 
effective preaching. With all your gettings, get the 
capacity to do that. It is even more important to 
see it, and know it, and be able to state it, than to vin- 
dicate it and show that it is just, as it ought to be. 
The truth is, there' is a way of rationalizing the 
Gospel, without being the least Germanized^ which 
does not help, but hinder. We enunciate a truth as 
reported in the Word, and proceed in a strain which, 
reduced to plain statement, would run thus : '^l^ow, 
brethren, the Lord says the wages of sin is death, 
and tlic gift of God is eternal life. I shall now 



PBEA GH, NOT AEG UE. 89 

proceed to show yon good and snfficient reasons why 
He should say so," and we proceed with onr argu- 
ment. The solemn assertions on the Lord's au- 
thority, if the people understood them, were proof. 
But we proceed with our argumentation, which may 
possibly be less cogent, or less clear, or less interest- 
ing than is desirable. The weakness or obscurity of 
our demonstration comes to be connected in the 
memory of the hearers with the propositions in- 
volved ; and if they are received finally, it is not 
because the Lord has said so, but because we have 
estabhshed His right to say them. 

Gentlemen, we are heralds, rather than logicians. 
We announce the Lord's will ; many truths of the 
Word we may fearlessly declare without waiting to 
argue. They will do their work. Some of them 
instantly connect themselves with convictions or 
demands in the human soul, and fit them as the key 
fits the lock. Some of them can afford to await 
proof. Some of them get their proof as other 
Scriptures are explained, as the stones hold one 
another in the arch. But to be able to echo the 
triumpliant and authoritative utterances of God's 
word, we must know them. Here is " ample scope 



90 FRUITFUL FIELDS. 

and verge enough " for our energies. How many 
books have been written on Genesis? Is it ex- 
hausted yet? Why, the last work on it, by Dr. 
Lange, with the additions of Dr. Taylor Lewis, is 
far the best. But is the book exhausted ? On 
the contrary, it never enlisted the study of so 
many as at this moment. For how many volumes 
have the Psalms furnished a basis? Is the mine 
worked out ? Who is to penetrate the prophecies 
of Ezekiel, Daniel, Jeremiah, and the rest of the 
prophets, continents which enthusiastic devotion has 
yet only surveyed, with less accuracy than the 
Livingstones and Bakers have attained in Central 
Africa. Yet generations of saints will yet feed in 
these desolate and waste places, as they now seem to 
many. Therefore, with all possible urgency and 
solicitude we beg you, as candidates for the ministry, 
get yourselves ready for the exegetical study of the 
holy oracles. Elementary Biblical criticism is too 
often a dull stud3^ I remember when the Hebrew 
Professor, who had been helping our slow and 
stumbling feet through Daniel, announced to the 
class that " our next hour introduced us to the 
Chaldee," my nearest neighbor drew a long breath, 



VNJUST ESTIMATES, 91 

and said, " I did my honest best with, the Hebrew : ^ 
now I gi\"e up ! " There must be no giving up 
here : a year's despondent inactivity here means com- 
parative feebleness for a life-time. 

It is the fashion to decry theology in our time. 
The opponents of that noble science mean no harm. 
They only do not understand. What they cannot bear 
is metaphysical or speculative hair-splitting, on the one 
hand, or on the other sharp-cut, clear statement and 
defense of truths they do not like. Let a man put 
his theology into attractive forms, and they will 
tolerate it; or let their own views be urged forcibly 
by a trained dialectician, and they make no objection. 
We can no more have exact religious thiukino; with- 
out tlieology, than exact mensuration or astronomy 
without mathematics, or exact iron-making without 
chemistry. The puddlers at Pittsburgh would prob- 
ably think a technical disquisition on the methods of 

* The writer notes witli pleasure tliat tlie class-book in Great 
Britain was tlien Elias Riggs' Manual of the Chaldee Lan- 
guage, with an introduction by Moses Stuart, of Andover, whose 
services to the cause of Bible Exegesis are as heartily appre- 
ciated in Grreat Britain as here. The volumes were imported 
from New York — an early installment of much literary property 
now moving eastward. 



92 TEACH THE PEOPLE. 

desulphurizing iron ore a tedious business ; but some 
one must master the chemistry of iron and steel mak- 
ing, or it will not go forward. Let there come along 
an earnest, plain-spoken, clear-brained man, who can 
put the technical chemistry into their own tongue, 
and illustrate it by effective experiment before their 
eyes, and he will interest any body of iron workmen 
in America. A plain man told Dr. Dabney that the 
reason John Randolph was so appreciated by the 
common people was, " Because Mr. Randolph was so 
instructive ; he taught the people so much which 
they had not known before." ^ So it will always be. 
Men object to what they do not understand or do not 
like in theology. Be you diligent, patient students 
of it, that you may put its exact truth in intelligible 
forms, and teach the people knowledge, f 

While theology, as a whole, ought to be studied 
with care and thoroughness, there are portions of the 
"Body of Divinity" that deserve special attention, 
because there is at the present time more than usual 
reference to them. While deprecating, in a former 

* Sacred Bhetorio, by Robert L. Dabney, D.D., a valuable wqrk, 
to which, we shall have occasion again to refer, 
f Ecc. xii. 9. 



BESULT8, NOT PROCESSES. 93 

lecture, tlie pulpit refutation of scientific imputations 
formally or inforinally cast on the Bible, it was not 
intended that an educated ministry should disregard 
them. It was only meant that formal and specific 
treatment in the pulpit is not usually to edification. 
But for the peace of his own mind, for the mainte- 
nance of perfect confidence in his own cause, and for 
the purpose of satisfying individual inquirers, a 
minister should be thoroughly conversant with the 
evidences of Christianity. It is one thing for a 
medical man to have mastered chemistry and pathol- 
ogy ; it is another for him to pour out his knowl- 
edge of the same on every patient, and to spend his 
time in demonstrating the impudent falsehood of 
every pretender to '' miraculous cures," whose cir- 
culars are sent to his patients.^ It is one thing for 
a lawyer to be well-informed in the principles and 
rules of law ; it is another altogether to marshal his 
erudition for every conviction in petty larceny. So 
while we do not recommend the employment of 

* Any one who takes tlie trouble to inquire, wiU be amazed to 
find from the bookseUers to what a hirg-e extent the " scientists " 
owe a market for their books to the clergy, who laudably and 
naturally desire to see what can be said against the truth. 



94 APPROACHING CONTROVERSY. 

puipit-time in the overthrow of every caviller, we do 
urge the importance of raastering the evidences of 
Christianity. 

There is some need, also, for more attention to the 
Romish controversy than has hitherto been given. 
It inchides the question of questions in Europe at 
this moment. But it is only a small and relatively 
unimportant part of the argument that is now enlist- 
ing alike divines and statesmen. Long before this i 
inquiry into the contradictory obligations of Roman 
Catholics in Protestant countries arose, there has 
been, and long after it has lost its interest, there will 
be, the deeper, wider, and farther-reaching question 
of salvation by grace, or salvation by something else. 
Americans have been indifferent to these issaes from 
strong confidence in their institutions, and from a 
certain contempt for Romanism, natural enough in 
the circumstances. This continent has not yet had a 
strong and capable expositor of Romish views. The 
system has been poorly represented, timid, and rather 
asking toleration than inliuence. But it has passed 
out of that stage. It is capable of adapting itself to 
all governments and all conditions of society. It can 
use the resources of the poor ; it can, like the priests 



A CORRECTED ESTIMATE, 95 

of Baal, in Ahab's time, feed at the table of the State. 
That we need not pay much attention to it because 
it will never dominate this Republic is an egregious 
mistake. ,A long way on this side of ruling it 
may obstruct, retard, ^nd injure. Poising itself be- 
tween two great parties in the State, and unfettered 
by any but its religious pledges, it can exact and 
secure concessions in its own interests, and to the 
damage of the Republic. 

To regard it as contemptible as a system of argu- 
ment and religious belief,- is an insult to the human 
understanding. That fabric on which for more tlian 
a millennium the mind of Europe was occupied, 
strengthening what was weak, defending what was 
exposed, and making it strong, compact, and impos- 
ing, is not a disorderly pile of loose stones and rotten 
timbers. As a system, it is concatenated, logical, 
and, if you admit a few of its fundamental principles, 
its conclusions are irresistible. If I put the statement 
strongly it is because I feel earnestly on the subject, 
when saying that many admirable Prot^ant min- 
isters would find themselves embarrassed in discus- 
sion with a well-educated member of the '' Society of 
Jesus." It is thought, indeed, illiberal to have strong 



96 VAL UE OF GEUBGH HISTORY, 

convictions on a topic of this nature ; but it is one 
thing to afford the fullest rights to every citizen, and 
the amplest consideration to his conscientious con- 
victions : it is another to be blind to the tenets and 
tendencies of a system which is, and cannot help 
being, a political corporation hardly less than a 
religion, and which has already enough of 
organization and force to make it the interest of 
politicians in our great centers to secure its pat- 
ronage."^ 

This topic may be studied in the department of 
Theology, or in that of Church History — ^to which, 
if I may judge from my own recollections, a young 
minister will find himself under great obligations. 
Much, of course, depends on the grouping of themes 
and the special aptitudes of both teachers and 
learners. In my own case, I studied Theology under 
a professor who was not exact, or profound, but who 



* It is not only in the action of Romanism on tlie public 
schools that there is cause for anxiety. In many jmrts of the 
country, under most mistaken ideas, Protestant parents intrust 
their children, particularly daughters, to Roman Catholic edu- 
cators. The education is second-rate, but it is showy ; and the 
influence is almost uniformly un-Protestant. 



KJ}^OW YOUR BIBLES. 97 

had many of the elements of a great and noble man, 
and who managed to give the impression that all 
truth was revealed for adequate and appropriate 
purposes, that it was godlike to love it, to live it out, 
and to employ it for the enlightenment of the race, 
and that it was unspeakably mean to feel that we 
had nothing more to do about it, after we had 
secured for our individual selves a hope of rest and 
peace. On the other hand, iii the department of 
church history, it seems to me, there was shown to 
me the difference in principles at the points where 
they strike human conscie]ice, and affect human 
interests, and there was laid in the mind the solid 
conviction that in the final issue even here, life, for 
the man, or the institution, is indissolubly linked with 
" submission to the father of spirits." ^ 

You may perhaps be surprised when I urge as 
another element in preparation for the work of 
preaching a thorough acquaintance with the English 



* Heb. xii. 9. It affords me pleasure to mention tliat the able 
Professor, liere alluded to, tlie Rev. Dr. Killen, of Belfast, 
Ireland, is still rendering effective service both in his chair, and 
by such works as The Ancient Churchy The Church, of the First 
Three Centuries, etc. 

5 



98 APT QUOTATION, 

Bible. Though it is under revision, the changes in 
it will not materially affect* its phraseology ; and 
though we have often to advert^ to the original for 
exact shades of meaning, to the mass of our hearers 
the English Bible is, and deserves to be, the standard 
of appeal. To be familiar with it so as to quote it 
from memory, with point and accuracy, is of no 
trifling importance. Even in point of language and 
style, it represents one of the best periods of English 
literature. It is often singularly grand in its sim- 
plicity, and singularly terse and emphatic in its 
nervous Saxon. A verse rightly put and rightly 
repeated, will often fix a truth better than a whole 
sermon. I once heard M. Merle D'Aubigno deliver 
a long, elaborate, and very able discourse, at the 
opening of a Theological Seminary in G-reat Britain. 
I do not remember a single idea in it all except one, 
which he stated and enforced with the question from 
the Epistle to the Hebrews : " We have had fathers 
of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them 
reverence : shall we not much rather be in subjec- 
tion to the father of spirits and live?" How often I 
a man will tell the minister he heard him preach sol 
many years ago, ingenuously adding, "I do not I 



BIBLE LANG UAGE BEST. 99 

remember the sermon, but I can tell you the text." 
How often a solemn and awful truth can be uttered 
in the impressive phraseology of the Scripture, which 
it* would seem harsh or arrogant to put in our own— 
" The wicked is driven away in his wickedness ; " 
" It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the 
living God ; " " How shall we escape if we neglect 
so great salvation?" '^ They shall utterly perish in 
their own corruption." How frequently a sin is 
indicated in a phrase which all men understand, 
which if . we try to render in our roundabout 
conventionalisms, we dilute the meaning, perhaps 
mislead altogether. How often the tenderest pathos 
is brought to bear without the least pomp of words, 
or elaborate painting: ^'As a father pitieth his 
children;" "As one whom his mother comforteth ; " 
Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die ? " How much 
rest and strength one comes to associate with its 
report of benedictions in Psalms and sermons, of 
speeches and arguments, through which is breathed 
the tone of calm and confident assurance : " Blessed 
are the pure in heart : for they shall see God ; " "I 
know whom I have believed ; " " Beloved, now are 
we the sons of God." " There remaineth, therefore, a 



100 SKILL IN TEACHING. 

rest for the people of God." Gentlemen, if you 
would speak to the conscience and heart of your 
fellow-men, if you would subsidize all their old 
memories, and enlist all their sacred associations 
on the side of your cause and your Master, have 
thorough and easy possession of your English 
Bible. 

"And how, one asks, is this to be gained?'' Some 
have been at pains to memorize it. There is a more 
excellent way. Head it for your own devotional 
purposes so much, enter into the spirit of it so 
deeply, that you shall have it literally " by heart." 
Men of taste, in thorough appreciation of Horace, 
Cicero, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Longfellow, can 
quote them accurately and at length. But what 
are these great masters to any man, in comparison 
with that which the Bible is to us as Ministers of 
Jesus Christ ? 

I would almost venture to put among the elements 
of preparation for preaching some little experience 
in teaching. A superficial person is apt to suppose I 
that to tell a thing once is sufficient for all purposes. 
A thoughtful person knows the contrary, knows that I 
in the common affairs of life we often repeat and I 



LEARN FROM THE LA WYERS. 101 

reiterate the instructions we wish to be remembered 
and acted upon. So a thoughtful teacher soon finds; 
and one of the main objects of the preacher is to 
teach. The teacher varies his phraseology, puts his 
points variously, asks questions, illustrates, suggests, 
employs shifts and expedients to insinuate definite 
ideas into the mind. A brilliant and successful 
advocate once told me that it was idle to suppose that 
one simple didactic statement would reach the 
understanding of the men on a jury. "I never 
assume anything of the *sort," said he; " I go over 
the same ground again and again, not always in ap- 
pearance, varying the language and mode of present- 
ing the idea, until no more can be said about it." 
And we must remember that twelve jurymen, on 
oath to decide justly, may be supposed to have their 
faculties on a tenser strain, and their intelligence 
higher than the average of an ordinary mixed con- 
gregation. Men find this out practically in teaching; 
and so not only because a minister is all the better 
for having some practical knowledge of teaching — 
for Sabbath-school and other purposes — but because 
teaching is so essential an element in good preaching, 
a little experience in practical instruction is to 



102 LEABN TO BE CONTENT. 

a candidate for the ministry a substantial advan- 
tage. 

ITor would I omit from the list of elements of 
preparation some endurance of the res cmgusta domi: 
a little personal conflict with straitened circum- 
stances. It is a good thing to have learned the value 
of money : to have acquired the power of sympathy 
with those who have it not : 

" Wan ignara mali^ miseris sucGurrere disco : " 
to be independent of luxuries : to enjoy looking at 
the store- windows of Broadway and think how much 
is there that you can do without : to be poor, and yet 
not tempted to mean and sordid devices : and to be 
able to preserve self-respect when money is a rapidlj^- 
diminishing quantity. Gentlemen, I need not hide 
from you that ministers, as a rule, are not rich. 
They are not so much below other professions, place 
for place, as is sometimes alleged ; but they have 
fewer remedies than their ill-paid fellow-laborers in 
law or medicine. Yet, they are often obliged to 
study well the buying yjower of dollars : and they 
are none the worse''' for it as men and as ministers. 
The men in the ministry who are rich by inheritance, 
or by felicitous arrangements, need special grace to 



A MAN'S REAL LIFE. 103 

keep them " up to pitch " in effort. They are specially 
liable to sore throat, weak bronchial tubes, delicate 
chests, and nervous affections, that require rest, 
travel, and variety of scene. The difficulties of 
narrow means have not " repressed the noble rage" 
of all ministers. One of the ablest writers yet pro- 
duced by the Baptist or any other denomination, the 
Eev. Dr. Carson, lived in a thatched farm-house, and 
often wrote, I am assured by one who had means of 
knowing, at the kitchen fire, rocking his child's cradle 
with his foot. Many young ministers are poor men, 
but that is no reason, Gentlemen, why you should be 
poor ministers. " A man's life consisteth not in the 
abundance of the things he possesseth." His bodily 
life does not — his intellectual does not— his moral 
does not — his ministerial does not — ^his spiritual life 
does not. He may be " poor, yet possessing all 
things." 

Only one thing more I feel constrained to speci- 
fy in this Lecture, without at all claiming to have 
inchided all the elements of preparation, namely, 
habits of personal devotion. Lately I saw the 
statement in one of the religious newspapers, that 
a minister was kept so long writing sermons that 



104 PERSONAL DEY0UTNE88, 

he had no time to study his Bible ! No man 
studies well, here, who does not pray well, any 
more than in Luther's time."^ 

When I was passing through my preparatory 
classes, I had the advantage of association with a 
group of eleven or twelve young men, who met 
once a week for the private study of the Bible 
and prayer. It was in our own rooms. We were 
friends, in perfect mutual confidence, not afraid 
of one another, and yet our intercourse was puri- 
fied, and elevated by our common pursuit and 
our united prayers. I was one of the youngest 
and the least able to make a contribution to the 



* The following extract is from a very thoughtful article in the 
Interior of Jan. 7, on '' the Bible in Church." 

" What prevents our ministers from adopting, more generally 
than they do, the practice of expository preaching? It is the 
most profitable, they will all say. They would much prefer it. 
What is in, the way ? The people look for a ' regular sermon.* 
Are we, then, under * bondage ' after all ? A minister in an 
important charge once told us that his time was so taken up in 
writing sermons that he actually had no time to study the Word 
of God. That was a strong statement, but we can readily be- 
lieve that if a minister .had the idea that two elaborately pre- 
pared * discourses ' were expected from him every week, he 
would subordinate everything to the attainment of that end.'' 



CHBI8TIAN FELLOWSHIP, 105 

common * stock ; but I think I could truly say, 
that no one set of lectures did so much as these 
weekly meetings to prepare me for being a pas- 
tor. The intellectual quickening was the least 
element in the preparation. 1 got an idea of the 
truest of all fellowship — fellowship in Christ. I 
learnt how love to the Master and love to saints 
go hand in hand, each strengthening the other. 
I learnt that a man does good to his people when 
he has come to count them a circle of his friends, 
and spontaneously — not officially — to carry them on 
his heart. 

When we parted, each to go on his way, we 
agreed on a time — the hour of our meeting — for 
remembering *one another, and exchanged lists of 
names and addresses. I have my copy still. Of 
the eleven, two are in heaven. The other nine 
are vigorous evangelical ministers. • It is twenty- 
six years since we parted. I do not doubt they 
remember me, and I still keep that " sacred tryst." 



LECTURE V. 



PEEPAEING A SERMON. 

It may seem to you. Gentlemen, as if we had lin- 
gered unduly among preliminary considerations, and 
approached with needless delays the immediate 
matter of sermonizing. If so, please set it down to 
the tendency in the lecturer's mind to desire not 
only clearness in a subject, but clearness all the way 
up to it. Possibly, if you recall these thoughts after 
some years, your judgment will justify the slow 
movement ; for you will have, seen that in the end 
principles determine particulars, and that men will 
pray, and preach, and labor generally according to 
their conceptions of the church's business, and of 
their own place as ministers. 

The priestly theory, for example, marks the Ro- 
man, the Greek, and most heathen systems. It 
shapes the labors of the clergy in almost every parti- 
cular. They can only " officiate " with the prescribed 



PREACHERS— NOT PRIESTS. 107 

robes : they can only move on the line of rubrics : 
they succeed in the degree in which they are accepted 
as official representatives. To get a bit of brass in 
the form of a cross hung round the neck next the 
skin, and out of all men's sight ; to " christen " a baby 
even without the knowledge or approval of parents ; 
to anoint a man even though he is incapable of re- 
sponding to any movement secular or spiritual; to 
give " Christian burial " — whatever that exactly 
means — to the dead, who in life would have given 
nothing good to the celebrant — these are admissible 
in such clerical life. Preaching is a subordinate duty 
to preparing for, or administering sacraments. 

Take the churches as a whole, and classify them, 
and you will find that as the priestly idea, or the 
High church idea, goes up, the sermon goes down. 
In Roman Catholic countries there is little preaching 
except in Lent,^and then it is not as a rule by tlie 
pastors, but by itinerant friars, whose function is 
preaching. In some instances their preaching is 
good of its kind — in some remarkably adapted to 
popular effect. But, as a rule, it does not admit of, 
nor receive too close inspection. The preacher in a 
cathedral, for example, is raised in a high pulpit ; 



108 MECHANICAL PREACHING. 

the audience is not seated ; there are no preliminary 
devotional exercises connected with the sermon ; the 
preacher enters the pulpit, crosses himself, and 
commences, " In the name of the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost," proceeding directly with his 
discourse, the most effective portions of which are 
usually sensuous pictures of our Lord's sufferings, 
emphasized frequently by reference to a cross, or 
crucifix in or near the pulpit."^ I have seen such a 
preacher exhibit, in tone and gesture, all the indica- 
• tions of the most vehement feeling, and yet with 
certain peculiarities of face which led me to retire, so 
as not to annoy anybody, and look at him with an 
opera-glass, and to my amazement and disgust, his 

■^ Tliere is a strong tendency in the Roman Catholic system to 
isolate the crucifixion, and so represent it as to appeal to the 
mere sensuous feeling. The genius of Protestantism, in closer 
harmony with the Bible, leads to ample exhibition of the dig- 
nity of the Saviour's Person, and to connect that, not so much 
with mere physical pain, and pathetic recital of touching details, 
as with the fact that he became '* obedient to death" in such a 
form as identified Him with the promised seed of the woman, 
and the substitute of sinners. Romanism has a high place for 
the crucifix, and the * ' Son of Mary." Protestantism knows 
nothing ''save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified," (1 Cor. 2-2) — 
Jesus Christ, the glorious Person, giving value and power to 
the work, " Him crucified." 



WITH THE UNDERSTANDING. 109 

countenance did not betray the least feeling. He 
was at a safe elevation, performing his rhetorical 
pantomime in a purely mechanical way, and yet not 
without its effect on a very illiterate audience. There 
is not only more good preaching in Connecticut than 
in a whole Eoman Catholic country like Spain or 
Portugal, but there is not in one of these so much 
preaching, good or bad, as in one of our States. Prot- 
estantism has produced, by its proximity and rivalry, 
more preaching for Roman Catholics in America 
than they would otherwise obtain. 

Let me now indicate some of the points to be as- 
sured in the making of a sermon ; the immediate 
details every man must flll in according to his own 
aptitudes, and the habits of mind he has been led to 
form. 

1. Be sure you understand the subject you under- 
take to present, so far as you bring it to the attention 
of the people. We do not mean that you know all 
about it, for there are many themes by their very 
nature bounded by the limits of religious thought, as 
the Divine nature and attributes, the future of the 
soul, the constitution of the Person of the Messiah, 
and the operation of the Holy Ghost in regenerat- 



110 AJSfD OF THE CLOUDS. 

ing. What we mean, is, that so far as your theme is 
to be set forth, you should have clear, definite ideas 
of your own, not half-thoughts, but thoughts, not 
dim and nebulous images looming through haze 
and mist, but distinct conceptions that admit of 
being put into intelligible language. It would be 
awkward, if some one had the right to interrupt a 
preacher in a flowing paragraph of graceful verbiage, 
with the demand, ^' Pray, tell us what you mean," if 
he could not tell. A good test of your .own grasp 
of the subject is found in talking it over with some 
one, if below your own intellectual plane, all the 
better. If you cannot explain it, and vary your 
phraseology, and put it colloquially, it is not likely 
to be of much value in the pulpit. Tou may imagine 
you have ideas, when you have only words. You 
may deem yourself a master of language, when it is 
language that is the master, and you the slave. If, 
captivated perhaps by one brilliant suggestion, per- 
haps by the very sound of the words in a text, per- 
haps by one striking application of a passage, you 
have been tempted to begin a sermon on it, and find 
you do not have clear, consecutive thought about it, 
lay it aside, until you €an read, study, examine, and 



ON THE PEOPLE'S LEVEL. HI 

master so much of it as a sermon holds. The first 
requisite to teaching is knowing. 

2. Be sure your theme is one the people can un- 
derstand. There is much with which your profes- 
sional education has familiarized you that is out of 
their depth. They have no ground in common with 
you in certain directions. There are controversies 
metaphysical, theological, even experimental, into 
which they have never been conducted, where your 
argumentations would be to them as algebraic sym- 
bols to one who never learned mathematics. Ton 
are writing in cipher and they have not the key. 
They make a little effort to understand, fail, sit 
down in despondency, with a little vexation and 
irritation of mind, where you ought to be regarded 
by them with complacency; so they not only lose 
their time, but they are ill-disposed to you next time 
you preach, and have so far formed a habit of inat- 
tention. 

It is not meant that at the beginning of your ser- 
mon the people understand the subject as. well as you 
do. If they did, there would be little need to prea*ch. 
It is meant that your arguments, appeals, explana- 
tions are such as thev can be made to understand. 



112 IMPRESSIONS REMEMBERED. 

The consciousness that they are taking in your ideas, 
and being carried from ground over which they had 
been before^ and on which you and they stood in 
common at the beginning, into entirely new ground^ 
is eminently pleasing, and is frequently expressed 
by " interesting." 

Nor is it meant that the people should be able to 
reproduce your arguments and conclusions. Often 
this would be impossible. But your sermon is not, 
therefore, useless. There are many things to be 
proved, of one of which an intelligent hearer would 
say, '^ I could not give the steps myself, but I know 
it can be proved. I heard our pastor on it, and 1 
know he satisfied me." Or an objection is to be 
disposed of, and a candid man might say, " I know 
it can be met, for I heard it discussed, and it was 
made clear to me, though I cannot recall the answer ; 
but I know there is one." 

, Let a gentleman on the hustings discuss political 
issues, in a strain of unintelligible abstractions, and 
he would never be asked for a second speech. Let a 
lawyer address a village jury in language and with 
considerations fit only for the pages of Coke upon 
Littleton, and he would have few cases. And let 



ADEQUATE THEMES. 113 

ministers preach, however ably or elegantly, above 
the comprehension of the people, and their general 
and kindly verdict will be that "they would be 
admirable professors, but — '' The plan of Ezra 
and his friends is indispensable to success.^ " So 
they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, 
and gave the sense, and caused them to understand 
the reading."t 

3. Be sure your theme is great enough for a ser- 
mon. Remember many of the people will have only 
one or two such in the week. A thing may be true^ 

* In connection with tlie reading of God's Word, sometliing 
needs to be said. There is, in some quarters, a growing idea 
that the reading is to be done, but whether inteUigibly or not is 
of little moment. This is oSensive to good taste and good 
sense, and is vicious in principle. It puts the reading of Scrip- 
ture among the mere preliminaries, to be got through with, as if 
the reader said : This is secondary — a mere form ; presently the 
real thing comes ; I shall be heard. How can a man truly 
magnify God's Word in his sermon, if he has belittled it in his 
reading ten minutes before ? It was my misfortune to hear the 
Scriptures read in the Protestant Episcopal Church in Rome, so 
rapidly, monotonously, and unintelligibly, that the Pope him- . 
self could not have complained of it as giving the Bible to the 
laity in the vulgar tongue. It was clearly an opus ope rat urn 
performance. It had to be done pro forma. Its value lay not in 
its reaching the mind, but in its being gone through. 

f Nell. viii. 8. 



114 '' BITS OF 8CENEB Y. " 

Scriptural, intelligible by you and the people, but 
not of such moment as to entitle it to be the burden 
of a sermon. That thorns were a part of the curse on 
the earth, and that our Lord was crowned therewith, 
when made a curse for us ; that a rainbow was a 
covenant sign to Noah, and that a rainbow was round^ 
the throne in the apocalyptic vision ; that the napkin 
and linen clothes lay in order in the empty -tomb, 
showing that our Lord did not steal out of it in 
unattended and nervous precipitancy, but left it as a 
man leaves his house where he is free ; that Jesus 
spoke to the young girl he raised up, with paternal 
tenderness, Talitha cumi^ as we should say, " Darling, 
arise ; " that Matthew calls himself " the publican," 
and that the other Evangelists omit the offensive 
word; these, and many things like them, are in- 
teresting in their place. They are " bits of scenery '' 
such as artists pick up, but not large enough to make 
a picture. They are fine as illustrations and allusions, 
but they are not great enough for sermon themes. 
Take the great outstanding facts, the Alps and Andes 
in the Bible-world, and make men look at them. 
One good look at Mont Blanc — why, it is worth a 
voyage to Europe ! The great sculptors of Greece 



NEW SERMONS ON OLD TEXTS US 

did not lay out their strength on carving cherry- 
stones. They toiled on Jupiters, Apollos, and 
Minervas. ITow, ministers often pass by the great 
facts, and the rich, succulent texts, perhaps because 
others, perhaps because they, have preached on them 
years ago, and they conclude the people remembered 
them as well as the preachers. But they do not in 
point of fact (their minds have not, indeed, been re- 
freshed by occasional glances at the manuscripts), and if 
they did, let there be new sermons on them, with new 
views, or new feelings, or new illustrations, and ordi- 
narily there will be some new hearers to be instructed.' 
4. Have an aim in each sermon. Do not enter on 
it because you must preach something. If any one 
should say to you. What are you driving at ? you 
should have no hesitation in answering. Let there 
be, for example, one great truth, of which you give 
the evidence, the elucidation, and the application, or 
one great duty of which you give the obligation and 
the best helps you can to its performance. Direct 
your arrows at objects without being personal ; come 
near your hearers. . Letters dropped into tlie post- 
office without address go to the dead-letter office, and 
are of no use to anybody. 



116 TB UTH RIGHTL Y DIVIDED. 

This distinct, definite aim will give, what all 
writers emphasize (Cicero not the least forcibly), 
namely, unity. So mnch has been written on it that 
I do not formally include it. I find, moreover, that 
early Christian preachers have often disregarded the 
received rules of rhetoric on this subject ; and yet, I 
dare say, they had — or they could not have been the 
good preachers they were — definite aims which gave a 
real, though not a formal, unity to their discourses. 
The young sermon- writer wishes to be full, and fear- 
ing paucity of truths at the end, crowds in all he 
knows pertinent to the subject at the beginning. It 
is as if he had to write a description of New Haven, 
and distrusting his store of materials, he dwells so 
long on 4he meadows and their heaps of hay on 
stilts, shrinking from the soil that bore them, -that 
he has not time for the noble spaces, the elms, 
the edifices, and the material for one of the 
finest university quadrangles in the world. But 
thought, observation, experience, and^ especially full- 
ness of mind, will correct this error, and a man 
will find out that he is to be sure of his target, and 
his bullet, and that he is to use no unnecessary 
powder. 



8TUBY FITNESS, 117 

5. Consider the time, place, and other conditions 
as affecting yourselves, and the people, in the prep- 
aration of your sermons. There would be some 
incongruity, for example, in one of you, during the 
first year of your ministry, announcing as a text, '' I 
have been young and now I am old," etc. ^ Ad- 
mitting the propriety of your enforcing the truth of 
that verse, texts can be found that would not make 
any one smile as you read them. There are poi'tions 
of God's "Word which pastors long settled, and settled 
in the esteem and regard of their people, may ^ell 
preach from, which yet would lose their force 
in an occasional sermon. Such a text is, " My lit- 
tle children, of whom I travail in birth again," 
etc. t 

The circumstances of the people addressed are to be 
carefully studied. I will be forgiven for marking 
here what I am deeply convinced accounts for the 
failure of many ministers. They are called to quiet, 
retired charges, among plain people. They look 
higher for their future spheres of labor. So the 



* Ps. xxxvii. 25. \ Gal. iv. 19. 



118 FIDELITY TO-DAY, 

sermons they write are not exclusively, not even 
mainly, for tlieir present lowly charge, but for a 
cultivated, numerous, and appreciative city audience, 
which at present exists only in their imagination : 
perhaps never does anywhere else. For, assuredly, 
the best way for a man to get out of a lowly position 
is to be conspicuously effective in it. I am assured 
by your Professors that nothing can be more welcome 
than any bit of personal experience, and that its 
employment here will be warranted by the object in 
view. I was selected, while in the senior year of my 
course, by my fellow-students to be their missionary 
in an outpost, where the congregation consisted of 
about eighty or ninety persons, one-tenth of them, 
say, cultivated, another tenth fairly intelligent, and 
the rest poor, ignorant peasants, speaking English 
imperfectly. I had, happily, only two sermons from 
my class exercises, of which I did not conceive 
highly. I have them still in reserve for a very rainy 
day. I was licensed on a Tuesday, and reached my field 
on Thursday night. I began on the next Lord's 
day. I knew my people's condition, and I wrote my 
sermon on Saturday. If these poor people were to 
understand me at all, I must be simple. If they 



TR UE PREPARATIOK 119 

were to be kept listenings I must go rapidly from 
thought to thonght. There mnst be what Cicero, 
Horace, and all the rhetorical authorities (I know 
now, I did not then), call movement. If they are to 
see my points, illustrations from their own line of 
observation must make them vivid ; and yet, if tliere 
is anything coarse, vulgar, tawdry, or puerile, the good 
taste and feeling of the cultivated will be offended. 
For such a congregation for the first two or three 
years of my life I prepared and preached my sermons. 
I got other like congregations all around on week- 
days. The floor on which I stood was often earthen, 
the roof not frescoed, the pulpit not ecclesiastical ; 
but I state a simple fact when I say that many of the 
sermons I prepared for that people I have repeated 
in New York, with apparent attention and profit on 
the part of the people. Is that because I had N'ew 
York in my mind's eye when writing them ? No, 
indeed ! It is because I had topics of great, world- 
wide, and everlasting interest. Tliey were, and are, 
real, living, all-momentous truths to me. I got into 
the way of making them as plain as I could to the 
people I was bound to teach, and it was the hest 
possible preparation for me for the work of snaking 



120 IN THE MOOD, 

them as plain as I can to the people I am hound to 
teach now. Gentlemen, wherever God puts you, do 
the best you can for the people there, as if you were 
to live and die among them. Any duties a man does 
with a view to something else remote and different, 
he is apt to do in a perfunctory and ineffective way. 
If you are a minister or missionary of a small com- 
pany, with an income of five hundred dollars — which 
is more than I began on — do your very best for that 
company; and if you grow, and it is best for you, 
the Lord will send somebody in search of you for a 
greater ; for there is no waste of power in His well- 
ordered kingdom. 

6. There is an indescribable but quite real gain 
to a preacher arising out of his own sympathy with 
his subject. A. man will write and speak with lan- 
guor and feebleness on Christian joy and gladness, if 
his own spirit is depressed ; and he will usually feel 
a corresponding embarrassment in discussing spiritual 
depression, its causes and cure, if he is himself in 
exuberant spirits. I leave out of account, of course, 
men who carry into the pulpit the faculties and 
powers of the actor, and even those who have such 
facility of adaptation that for the time they com- 



PREAGHEE8, NOT ACTORS. 121 

pletely throw themselves into the required role. I 
speak of ordinary, truthful, sincere men. This cir- 
cumstance should be taken into account in the choice 
of subjects. Some regard is to be had to your own 
mental and spiritual condition, "WTiether a man 
should ever speak above and beyond his own experi- 
ence is a question on which I do not enter here ; but 
for his own sake, his people's sake, and the sake of 
the sermon, he should have his theme as far as possible 
in the current of his own thoughts and feelings. 
There are topics, indeed, as to which this will only 
become the case by effort, by contact with others, and 
by prayer. If a week has been marked, for example, 
by sickness and death among the people, then the 
sermon may well catch its spirit from the state of 
mind thus induced. 1 think it a dangerous thing 
to one's self to deliver, with any amount of feeling 
evoked by the occasion, the sublime truths of revela- 
tion, without a present, immediate sympathy with 
them. I should fear its effect in hardening the heart, 
producing insincerity, and blunting the perceptions. 
Now, this temptation can be reduced by choosing 
themes so far in accord with the tone of your own 

minds that no violence will be done them in the dis- 
6 



122 WHERE WE BELONG. 

cussion, and that the preaching will be congenial 
work, and enlist your whole faculties. Of course, 
this may be put in another fashion : be spiritually- 
minded ; live much in the written Word of God ; be 
in sympathy with the Incarnate "Word, and you will 
be at home among the themes of which the Bible 
speaks, and you are to discourse. And in connection 
with this, live much among your people. It has 
sometimes happened to me to be away during the 
week, and to return at the end of it for the Sabbath. 
It may seem absurd to you, but I have often set out 
on the Saturday afternoon to make two or three calls 
among my people to renew and fix the sense that 
they belonged to me, and I to them, in order to 
comfort in the services of the following Lord's Day. 

And now, as to the actual making of the sermon, 
its theme being chosen with due regard to the condi- 
tions stated, no one man can lay down rules for 
another. This much, however, in general terms, I do 
not hesitate to say to you, while you are young men 
and young ministers, write your sermons with the 
utmost care. Write with the most lucid order you 
can secure. Write in the best language, the most 
concise, elegant, and transparent you can command. 



A PLEA FOR THE PEN. 123 

Write in the most correct and faultless style jowv 
judgment approves. Write every word, or an equiv- 
alent for every word, and set down every idea yon 
ought to give to the people, and in its relative place. 
Write, if necessary, more tlian once, first a brief, then 
2i precis of greater length, then a full and complete 
presentation of the whole matter as you are to give 
it to the people. I say this to yon with the utmost 
explicitness, and with the strongest emphasis. Fore- 
go every bottle bat the ink-bottle. Write regularly, 
conscientiously, and at your best. I urge this on you 
all the more because I am myself described, in a way 
that may mislead, as an extempore speaker, and I 
should be extremely vexed if my supposed method 
should ensnare any one into the delusion that any 
purely extempore plan is likely to be permanently 
effective with ordinary men. Whether you take your 
manuscript to the pulpit, or burn it when you have 
done your best upon it, or leave it in some limbus 
sermonum to be be burned by ungrateful posterity, 
is of secondary, that you write is of the first, impor- 
tance. 

If you inquire why this is urged so vehemently, 
let me reply succinctly. It is the way to prune off 



124: TAKING ONE '8 OWN MEASURE. 

redundancies. It is the way to exactness of phrase- 
ology. It is the best method of taking one's own 
measure. One has an idea, or a group of them, by 
which he is impressed. They loom large. Like the 
stars in the sky, they appear numerous from their 
very lack of order. He thinks himself rich. He has 
his mental picture of them, and they move over the 
landscape of his imagination like the bits of glass in 
a kaleidoscope. He sits down to put them on paper. 
One, two, three — what's the matter ? Where are all 
the rest ? There are not so many as he thought ; 
and, behold, they are — now that he looks at them on 
paper — not so brilliant as he imagined. They do not 
sparkle. There is no corruscation. If he is to make 
a display, he must get more thoughts and other 
images! Had he got on his feet with just those 
pieces, he must have kept the kaleidoscope in con- 
stant motion, showing always the same bits of glass, 
only in somewhat different combinations. 

When a man writes his sermon as well as he can, 
he has a kind of outward and sensible sign to himself 
of honest preparation. He is stronger for it. He 
cannot write down what he feels to be absolute non- 
sense. Self-respect forbids his wasting good paper 



GREAT 8PEAKEBS. 125 

on mere truisms, on absolute commonplace, and 
needless repetition. If there is anything in him he 
will bring it out and put it on paper. If there is not, 
the paper will help him to see it, and the sooner he 
does, the better, for human '' nature abhors a vac- 
uum." 

At a later stage I shall tell you how all this is com- 
patible with a free delivery of one's thoughts, and, 
if it interests any one, shall state my own method. 
But here I am anxious to combat the objections that 
will arise in some minds to this writing plan. " Law- 
yers and legislators do not write." How do you 
know ? On the contrary, the Y&i'j best legal speakers 
have been sedulous, painstaking writers, often re- 
writing, revising, altering, and amending. You tell 
me of old and experienced Senators who, in the 
nature of the case, cannot write replies to speeches 
made on the spot. Ah, yes ! but we are not talking 
of old and experienced Senators, but of young and 
quite inexperienced ministers. And even with the 
Senators, the case differs from ours. A question is 
up for a month at a time. It is discussed at the 
table, in the lobbies, in the smoking-room, and in 
all the papers. A man is talking of little else while 



126 BRILLIANT EXCEPTIONS. 

the tiling is on the carpet. When he gets on his 
feet, he has only to marshal in order what has been 
on his lips, and in his brain for long, and in which 
thought has been stimulated by all the contact of 
mind with mind. And then, bear in your thoughts, 
that when that matter is issued, it is gone ; and there 
is no such temptation to go back and quote himself 
as there would be if he had to discourse twice on 
the same theme, or a branch of it, on Sabbath, and on 
one week night, all the year round. 

It is true you can point to eminent men who do 
not write ; and one who nobly fills a foremost place 
in the pulpit has conspicuously discarded paper. But 
that is after a quarter of a century of writing; and 
it is accompanied by the caution that one is still to 
write, for the reasons given already, only not what you 
are preaching. "Whenever a kind Providence fills 
theological seminaries with men of the ripe culture, 
ready fluency, calm equipoise, and copious knowledge, 
of that eminent brother, aided by a quarter of a cen- 
tury of most effective writing, then and not till then 
the amateur Professor — ^like myself — of that day, 
may counsel the abandonment of the writing. But 
is it fair to belittle the ladder by which we climbed ? 



" THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT" 127 

You maj point indeed to effective speeches, made 
" on the spur of the moment ; " but they are no argu- 
ment in the case. There was something — -a scene, an 
opponent, an argiiment, that drew them forth. But, 
Gentlemen, we cannot get up a stimulating scene, in 
God's house, three times a week. And if you had an 
honest opinion from those who did so well on the 
spur of the moment, you would commonly find that 
faithful memory, put on her mettle, reproduced some- 
thing laid up before, in perhaps another connection, 
and for another purpose. I have heard many speeches, 
of various degrees of merit, in all sorts of circum- 
stances ; and it has been my own lot to make several, 
mostly of little account ; and my deliberate opinion 
is, that hardly anything is of value that has not been 
prepared, and prepared for the occasion of delivery. 

On the subject of divisions of sermons, of the re- 
lations of exordium, exposition, proposition, main ar- 
gument, and conclusion, or peroration, on which Aris- 
totle, Cicero, Quinctilian and Horace have written, I 
do not dwell. There are three books in which these 
topics are discussed at length, and to advantage, 
all within your reach, and which you can study at 
your leisure — only do not put it off, for you will get 



128 THE A UTHORITIES, 

little leisure when you are pastors — namely Whately's, 
Ehetoric^ Dr. 'Dd^hnQj''^' Sacred Rhetoric^ and the 
volume on the " Office and WorJc of the Christian 
Ministry ^^^ ^ than which I have seen no more exact 
and adequate text-book. In specifying these I am 
not to be understood as depreciating the various 
excellencies of Campbell, Porter, Shedd, Yinet, or the 
admirable '^ Thoughts on Preaching" of my prede- 
cessor in JSTew York, which, unhappily, he did not live 
to set in order with the consummate taste with which 
his works are finished. . 

I will only add in conclusion. Gentlemen, that wlien 
a sermon has been written, full of matter, clear in 
order, vivid in illustration, rapid and graceful in 
movement, evangelical in tone, and fitted to the best 
of your ability to the people who are to hear it, 
whether you read or utter its thoughts, one more ele- 
ment in preparation is not to be omitted — for if omit- 
ted your other toil goes for little. " The flesh profit- 
eth nothing," nor eloquence, nor imagination, nor 
'demonstration, even of inspired truth. "It is the 

* " Office and Work of the Christian Ministry, '' by 
James M. Hoppin, Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral The- 
ology in Yale College. 



8EBM0NS C0N8EGBATEB. 129 

spirit that quickeneth." Take your sermon, lay it 
out before God your Saviour and Master, make it a 
clear offering to Him. Say to Him, " Here, Lord, I 
am Thine ; for Thee, and for none other. This is 
Thy truth. I have done my utmost to set it forth in 
order. Lord take it ; use it ; help me to be nothing, 
to forget myself, my work, my effort, and let the* 
people see only Thee, hear only Thy Word, deal only 
with Thee, that beholding Thy beauty, they may love 
Thee, that seeing Thine image they may be changed 
into it, by the Spirit of God." 

Having seen your dimness in His great light, and 
felt your feebleness in presence of His power, com- 
mit your work to Him, and let there be, if possible, 
no more of self blending with it. Go and preach, 
now. No matter how you are criticised ; no matter 
how weak you seem when you have preached.^ The 

* It is difl&cult to get rid of the idea that preachers who have 
acquired some position, and become objects of popular notice, 
become less useful as preachers in their high, than in their 
lower, estate. While a man is pursuing his work unnoticed and 
comparatively unknown, he usually doe^ it in the way he finds 
best for results, and with little regard to rules. But the moment 
he becomes a little prominent, the vultures are gathered together. 
From the secular, and, more vulgar and vulgarizing still, from 
the religious press, literary scouts are detached to scrutinize, and 
6* 



130 GLOBY IJSr THE LORD. 

Lord's word has had free course : and it is His way 
by the weak things of the world to confound the 
mighty. He stains the pride of all human glory, 
that according as it is written '' he that glorieth, let 
him glory in the Lord." Now, it is no matter if 
there be opposition. It is not against you — you are 
no longer in the* case. The soul has heard the Lord. 
Lie will take care of His work and glory. 

*' Faint not, and fret not, for threatened woe, 
Watcliman on Truth's gray height ! 
Few though the faithful, and fierce though the foe. 
Weakness is aye Heaven's might. 

Time's years are many. Eternity one, 

And one is the Infinite ; 
The chosen are few, few the deeds well done, 

For scantness is still heaven's might." 

report " how he does it ; " as if he were an actor, trained to play 
his part, and as fair a subject for discussion as if every man had 
paid his dollar for the opportunity to witness his tricks of rhet- 
oric. His figure, his dress, his hair, his pronunciation, his 
height, the plans on which they suppose he proceeds (when in 
most cases he has no plans), are all duly set forth, with a fullness 
and accuracy proportioned to the invention and power of obser- 
vation of the critics. Gentlemen ! we are not on exhibition. 
We are trying to do a solemn duty, under great responsibilities. 
To keep down self -consciousness and forget ourselves is one of 
our hardest tasks, if you will but think of it. Do not, please, 
make it harder for us. 



LECTURE VI. 



A PILE of cannon-balls on the grass, uniform, 
round, shining, heavy, may represent a pile of 
sermons. They are sometimes heavy also — not in 
the military sense. But as with the bullets, much of 
their efficacy will depend on the aim, the force, and 
the general manner of delivery. Many sermons 
are fired too high, many are misdirected, many 
fall short of the mark, or, like spent bullets, 
they do little execution. We propose to devote 
the most of this hour to the question of delivering 
sermons. 

To avoid disappointment afc the close, let it be 
stated here that the lecturer knows no secret of 
success, has no uniform rule that infallibly succeeds, 
and does not believe there is such a rule in ex- 
istence. The trees, as they were made, bring forth 
fruit after their kind, and all that gardeners can do i^ 



132 CLOSE BEADING, 

to give them a fair field, and keep off all noxious 
tilings. 

1. Some read their sermons word for word as 
^written, from beginning to end. The extent to 
which this practice prevails is so great as to make it 
certain that it cannot be absurd and ridiculous on its 
face. Many, perhaps the great majority, of the 
English Episcopal clergy do this. So do many of 
the Presbyterian clergy in Scotland. So do most of 
the Congregational, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Epis- 
copal clergy, I presume, of America. JSTot only is 
this the case, but many of the very greatest preachers, 
like Jonathan Edwards in this country, like Chalmers 
in Scotland, read their sermons. The advantages 
are many. Precision, exactness, and freedom from 
all offensive excrescences, such as loose language, 
colloquialisms, disjointed grammar, and rambling 
repetition, are, or ought to be, secured. Brevity is 
also more easily arranged for and assured. There 
is also a fair presumption established in the mind 
of the hearer that the preacher has made preparation, 
for there is the manuscript before him. In England 
this presumption is weakened in a good degree by 
the known traffic in sermons, and by incidents, grave 



TWO SIDES TO THE QUESTION. 133 

and gay, of which every one has heard, as to sermons 
that have done more than double duty. One of the 
greatest gains, it appears to me, is found in the 
closeness and consecutiveness of thought, and the 
felicity of expression, which it is difficult to have 
but by the reading of written composition. I con- 
fess that when I have occasionally listened to the 
better order of preachers of this type, and have 
noticed the faultless and elegant diction, and the 
charm of ornate composition, pleasing as it strikes 
the ear, I have had moments of despair, and thought 
how absurd and unreasonable it is to expect such 
audiences to listen to any one who adopts the plan to 
which I have been led, and which must necessarily 
lack these attractive peculiarities. 

But there are considerations on the other side. 
A directness of address is attainable in another way, 
which it is difficult to have in readino\ The emotion 
of yesterday cannot always be at the call of the 
preacher when he reads, as when he wrote, though it 
must be admitted that genuine pathos or genuine 
humor will affect when read, no matter when written ; 
the jokes, therefore, over '^ feelings a week old" have 
no adequate foundation. The numbet of men who 



134 GOOD BEADING. 

can, or do, read so well as to turn attention from the 
reading, and fix it on the person and the ideas, is, 
unfortunately, not large. Nor does it certainly 
follow that a man has given a matter thorough 
and effective preparation because he has written. 
There is extempore writing, as truly as extempore 
speaking. 

This much, thon, must be admitted, that while 
many are most effective and admirable when reading 
sermons, there is nothing in the nature of things to 
make it the absolute rule, and it has some inherent 
disadvantages to be got over. This further observa- 
tion may be made, that they who read ought to read 
well, that is, with distinctness ; enough loudness to 
be audible without effort from the hearers ; with 
proper emphasis ; and with suitable feeling. And 
yet, if the reading be obviously artistic, it offends. 
Good reading, like a good style in writing, should be 
like clear glass, of which the eye takes no account 
because it perfectly sees through it the objects 
beyond. All the ornamental in reading or in writing 
is like the colors on stained glass. What is gained 
in beauty is lost in transparency. 

2. A second method is employed by those who 



MEMOBIZINO. 135 

write and then commit to memory, and repeat to 
the audience. Many Scotch preachers Begin and go 
through life on this plan, acquiring a certain facility 
of remembering, after some time, by which the early 
labor is greatly reduced. On this method, on- 
lookers may draw conclusions from general principles 
which are not borne out by fact. It might be 
thought, for example, an almost impossible thing tg 
learn a sermon of an hour, and perhaps two of them 
for .a day. It might be thought that the mind would 
be so busy in remembering, as to have no time for 
feeling. It might be thought that action, and all 
other concomitants of natural communication, would 
be necessarily shut out by the one absorbing effort to 
get the ideas and words into their places. Yet, in 
point of fact, these evils are escaped by the best 
preachers of this sort. They do feel, and show 
feeling ; do move eye and hand and body in sympathy 
with their words, and produce, as in his line an actor 
does, as a good elocutionist does, great effects by 
their efforts. I think it likely that Whitfield did not 
write ; but he had gone over a certain set of truths 
and remarks until they were as good as written. 
The same is true, I presume, of a living American 



136 DEFECTS OF THE PLAN. 

Evangelist, who is now preaching in Great Britain 
with very marked blessing. No one who has gone 
through an American college can miss knowing the 
steps of the process ; for all stage-speaking is done 
in this waj^ ; and many men never make as much 
impression as orators in all their future life as in their 
" pieces " on the stage. If they were obliged to 
^rite more and more speeches, memorize, and de- 
liver them, the exercise would become easier, and 
many men who now read would thus be more effect- 
ive than on their present method. 

Yet, it must be admitted that there are consider-, 
ations on the other side. Some are deficient in ver- 
bal memory. Some are incapable of trusting them- 
selves. Some are so obviously and completely 
introverted — the eye on vacancy, the brow contracted, 
and the perplexed and distracted mind running to 
and fro in the chambers of the brain, looking for 
missing words, searching in the dark, very much 
like JEneas when calling again and again for the lost 
Creusa ! And the same want of spontaneity, freshness, 
and directness chargeable on the reading plan is, in a 
degree, to be expected here. Yet, we repeat, evils 
which we, in theory, might expect are, by many, 



SPEAK NA TUB ALL Y. 1 37 

avoided in actual practice, for the human mind is a 
wonderful instrument, and capable of astonishing 
adaptations. 

They who make addresses on this plan, have espe- 
cial need to cultivate the voice, or it is in great dan- 
ger of becoming a monotone. The air of average 
church-buildings, particularly in the afternoons and 
evenings, co-operating with the mental and bodily 
condition of many hearers, is so conducive to sleep, 
that it is undesirable to invite ^' tired nature's sweet 
restorer" by the voice in the pulpit. When both 
eye-gate and ear-gate are closed " the city of Man- 
soul," as Bunyan represents it, cannot be entered for 
its good. To speak naturally, even what we have 
ourselves written, is difficult ; yet not, it seems to me, 
quite so difficult as to read naturally. A. larger pro- 
portion, according to my observation, of readers 
than of non-readers, suffer from weakened throats. 
This may be explained in part by the fact that in 
reading the head is bent ; there is a pressure on the 
vocal organs, which work at a disadvantage as com- 
pared with the ease and freedom they enjoy in an 
erect speaker. In the Episcopal Church the reading 
of the service, if followed by sermons by the same 



138 FROM NOTES. 

men, such as are preached elsewhere, would become 
intolerable, and, in point of fact, breaks down many 
who attempt it. The good preachers usually have 
readers. 

3. The third method is that which almost every one 
has adopted some time or other, namely, the making 
of a brief with heads, divisions, and catchwords on 
which the eye rests, while the mind is expected to find 
suitable language on the occasion. It is a very com- 
mon, and very effective plan with many, notwith- 
standing its alleged resemblance to a chicken stoop- 
ing for a mouthful of water, and then stretching up 
the neck to get the benefit of it and send it to its 
proper place. A man who finds he can manage very 
well on this plan, ought, it seems to me, to be at the 
pains sometime to fix in his mind the entries on his 
bit of paper, and dispense with it, and at least ascer- 
tain by experience, if an increase of power be not 
within his reach. 

From having employed this plan for many years in 
a ladies' class of between two and three hundred per- 
sons, and where many Scripture texts are in requisition, 
I know that it can be harmonized with considerable 
freedom of speech. Still, a man must know his smb- 



A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 139 

ject thorougMy, or there will be bondage, and the 
chains will clank. 

4. The f onrth and last method is to prepare what 
one has to say with care and exactness, in the substance 
and the words, so as to have it all before the mind, 
and then to stand np and give the sense of it to the 
people, in such language as comes at the moment. 
The mode of preparation may be by writing, or, as 
it is in, I think, exceptional cases, without writing, 
but solely by meditation. In harmony with what 
has been said already, and from my own experience, 
I think the writing is better than the mere medita- 
tion for ordinary men. 

I am assured that there will be pardon extended to 
me for the egotism of detailing here my own experi- 
ence. I wrote, and in a sort of way, memorized two 
or three class exercises when a student. I had to 
preach before the Presbytery, and it was the custom 
for each minister to criticise. One good, wise, and 
plain-spoken man remarked that " the young man 
seemed to look only at some object in the corner of 
the gallery, and, moreover, to be very much afraid of 
it. He ought to look at those to whom he speaks." 
That was a true and a salutary criticism. I laid 



140 ^ TEST OF GOOD 8ERM0N8, 

it to heart ; I never tried memorizing again. Frorti 
that time and onward I put on paper all I knew 
abont my subject, in the order in which it had better 
be spoken. I fix this order and the illustrations in 
my mind, in studious disregard of the language, except 
in the case of definitions, if there are any, depending 
on verbal exactness. I try to have it so that I could 
talk it over ; give the end first, or begin in the middle 
if need be, and then I go to the pulpit, and converse 
with the people about the matter in a tone loud 
enough to be heard through the house, if I can. That 
is all. There is no secret about it, Gentlemen. - 

Some inquisitive person may ask \\o\v long this 
fixing process requires ? The time varies; but this 
rule is pretty uniform — the worse the sermon, the 
longer it takes. A good sermon has points, natural 
divisions, inherent helps to memory. It is like a JSTew 
England village, each house with something distinct- 
ive about it. A poor sermon is like a street of brown 
stone houses, all much alike in dull monotony in 
everything but the numbers, which usually (so per- 
verse is human nature) you can only see by climbing 
the stoop. 

"When a good sermon is finished on Saturday, a 



''IN BLACK AND WHITE." 141 

reading that evening, and another, more hurried, on 
Sabbath morning, is sufficient, and a couple of hours 
is quite enough to repossess one's self of the right 
kind of sermon written twenty years ago. 

Now, one may say, why take the trouble to write? 
Already general considerations on that subject have 
been submitted, to which it is sufficient here to refer. 
For me, I should not feel that I had done my. utmost 
without it. I have an indefinite feeling that the ser- 
mon written is a tangible property, common to me 
and to my people. I see just how much I know, and 
how much I can hope to make the people know. If 
I cannot put an idea down on paper, so that 1 can 
tell it intelligibly to the people, then it miglit do for 
a book, but it does not suit a sermon. I cannot ex- 
pect the people to remember what I could not. So 
the composition conies to 'have a tacit, constant refer- 
ence to the speaking, and the ideas and illustrations 
take on a kind of fitness for conversational use, and 
though the outcome will often lack neatness, exact- 
ness, delicacy, of touch, and sustained elevation, it is a 
part of myself, and I have the feeling that it may 
and can become a part of my hearers. 

I have already repeatedly, and I hope sufficiently, 



142 APOSTOLIC EXAMPLE. 

guarded myself against beings supposed to dictate to 
each man tlie way in which he is to preach, irre- 
spective of habits, temperament, and aptitudes. For 
the sake of those who are considering how they are 
to proceed in the formation of their plans, it may 
be proper here to state a few considerations, in favor 
of what 1 shall call accurate writing and free 
delivery. 

It must be owned that the reading of sermons is 
unknown in the reports that come to us of apostolic 
preaching. The apostles spake " boldly " {parresia\ 
with freedom of speech (Acts iv. 13) ; and a picture 
of any one of them reading an address to the people 
w^ould be instantly challenged as palpably inaccurate. 
The same is true of our Lord, not only in His 
discourses to the people by the sea-side and the way- 
side, but in His exposition in the synagogue. He 
closed the book, and gave it to the minister, and sat 
down ; and when the expectant looks of the people 
invited an address, " he began to say unto them." 
(Luke iv. 20, 21.) 

Now, it may be alleged that these cases are not in 
point, on two grounds: that in the first place the 
sermons of that time were not the formal, didactic 



SERMON AT A TEENS. 143 

statements now required, but personal narratives, or 
arguments made and sustained by quotation from 
the Divine "Word, as in the case of Peter's preach- 
ing at Pentecost ; and in the second place, 
these preachers certainly did. not write sermons, 
but spoke, in the literal sense of the phrase, extem- 
pore. 

As to the former of these two rejoinders, it is 
freely admitted that apostolic addresses were informal 
and undetermined by any homiletical rules for 
sermon-making. But it will be remembered that we 
plead for a return to their method; for a less 
restrained plan ; for the opening up of the Scrip- 
tures, in the form of exposition. So far we should 
bring ourselves into closer accord with the apostolic 
ministry. It would be gratuitous to assume that 
when Paul opened his' mouth on Mars' Hill to preach 
to sophists and idolaters, be had made no preparation. 
He could not move among images and altars without 
reflection on the specific truth which was to over- 
throw both the one and the other. His mind was 
too active to allow him to gaze in unreflecting 
wonder. But when he did speak, his sermon was 
obviously born of the occasion ; drew its force 



144 THE SONS OF THE PROPHETS. 

and inspiration from the surroundings; and had 
all the freedom and impetus of a decided, prompt 
utterance from a well-furnished head and a fervent 
heart. 

That they did not write is to be accounted for in 
part by the supernatural aid given to them; and in 
part by the occasional character of their ministrations. 
They moved from place to place in most cases, and 
do not stand in the same relation as the settled 
pastor. 

There is another form of authority on this subject 
which I do not remember to have seen adduced, and 
yet which, it seems, to me, is admissible. It is com- 
mon and just to say that the later prophets of the 
Old Testament constituted a providential preparation 
for the New Testament. As one reads through his 
Bible in order, the priest becomes of less and less 
importance, and the teacher rises into prominence. 
Quite early in Hebrew history, theological seminaries 
have a place, and the ^^sons of the prophets" occupied 
them, receiving instruction in music and the sacred 
Scriptures. The far-seeing patriots of Israel, like 
Elijah and Elisha, saw the need of an educated body 
of instructors for the people, if Baal- worship was to 



WITH A DIFFERENCE. 145 

be excluded. • Kow, the inspired prophets, who, as a 
rule, were of this class, but rendered pre-eminent by 
inspiration, according to my conception of their work, 
delivered the messages, as the word of the Lord, to 
the people, not always, indeed, comprehending the 
tidings they bore, but employing their own minds on 
them, as we do on the Bible; and their written 
statements remain as the permanent record of their 
fidelity, and the means of warning and instruction to 
all future ages. According to this conception, there 
is little difficulty in accounting for the abrupt transi- 
tions, the frequent changes of person, of scenery, and 
of style of address. We have in our hands, in fact, 
the written communications which they, putting 
themselves into the right state of mental receptivity, 
obtained from the Lord, and which they made the 
basis of. addresses to the people. In so far (and only 
in so far, for there are many obvious differences) they 
seem to me to furnish example to us of lowly, 
prayerful waiting on God, in ih.^ study of His word, 
and in careful preparation, followed by free, earnest 
spoken address to the people. Nor can we do any 
better than they did in that time of genuine revival 
described in 2 Chron. xvii. 9, when Levites and priests 
7 



146 THE WAY OF THE FATHERS, 

" taught in Judah, and had the book of the law of 
the Lord with them, and went about throughout all 
the cities of Judah, and taught the people. And the 
fear of the Lord fell upon all the kingdoms of the 
lands that were round about Judah, so that they 
made no war against Jehoshaphat." Now, as then, a 
strong and faithful pulpit is no mean safeguard of a 
nation's life. 

For four or five centuries after our Lord's ascension 
the ordinary preaching was mainly expository, and 
delivered without notes ; but if we may draw a con- 
clusion from the homilies, commentaries, and other 
works that remain, written preparation was made. 
The same was true in much later times : hence the 
voluminous remains of many preachers. If any of 
you look with amazement on the immense amount of 
printed matter left by some of the Eeforniers and 
some of the Puritans, remember two things ; the less 
important, that these worthy men were not required 
to keep abreast of a religious press like ours, and 
read numerous newspapers a^d pamphlets, nor to at- 
tend interminable meetings and committees, the ex- 
crescences on modern Christian life in which Christian 
activity is organized away to so large an extent, out 



''DBY bones:* 147 

of the hands of individuals. The second and more 
important is that they habitually expounded the word 
of God, and that we have nearly all that they wrote 
and spoke."^ 

It was with the admission into the church of the 
method of the schools that the simplicity, naturalness, 
and directness of the early preaching were exchanged 
for formal methods^ excessively minute analysis, and 
multitudinous divisions, of which it has been wittily 
said that, like the bones in EzekiePs valley of vision, 
" there were very many — and they were very dry." 
So soon as men began to make, as Nathaniel Hardy 
does, fifty-nine sermons on the first and second chap- 
ters of 1st John, being earnest and evangelical, anx- 

* In Nicliols' Series of Commentaries, issued in Edinburgh, 
gome years ago, is the well-known work, '' A Commentary on 
THE Whole Epistle to the Hebrews. Being the substance 
of thirty years' Wednesday's Lectures at Blackfriars, London, by 
that holy and learned divine, William Gouge, D.D., and late 
Pastor there." An account of his life and labors is prefixed, 
which ministers would do well to read in these times of appar- 
ent overwork, when they are tempted to think no lot so hard as 
their own. Gouge was a model pastor, and his Wednesday lec- 
tures had such a place in the public esteem *' that when the 
godly Christians of those times came out of the country into 
London, they thought not their business done unless they had 
been at Blackfriars Lecture." 



14:8 MEANING, AND ITS UTTERANCE. 

ions to tell tlie saving truth, they are tempted to 
strain passages in order to get in all they desire, and 
so they become less accurate than they should be in 
reflecting the mind of the Spirit and nothing more, 
in the Scriptures discussed. 

But, in the next place, is there not a form in which 
the help of the Holy Ghost may be realized, where 
a man has put down, for the sake of accuracy, and in 
the way of honest preparation, what he feels he ought 
to teach, and then expects, as to the delivery, that it 
will be given him in that hour what he shall say? 
Dr. Parker ^ makes a distinction between interpre- 
tation, which usually comes slowly as the fruit of 
labor and diligence (though a meaning may suddenly 
flash out to the eye of a devout and attentive reader), 
and the utterance of the interpretation. No man is 
at liberty to go into the pulpit and count on the 
instant help of the Holy Ghost to interpret to him 
the Divine Word. By its very nature the Bible 
is in his hand ; he can study it at leisure. The 
Lord does not supersede human diligence by super- 
natural aid. ITo need exists to wait for the public 

*The Paraclete (p. 89), New York : Scribner, Armstrong 
&Co. 



'COOL blood:' 149 

occasion, to ascertain its meaning. That can be done 
in the closet. But he thinks it is different with 
utterance. The public occasion changes conditions, 
introduces electric sympathy, brings high excitement, 
and intense emotion. Memory, fancy, and especially 
feeling, are stimulated. This .is all confessedly on 
the human side, but Dr. Parker thinks that it cannot be 
offensive to the Holy Ghost to ask such power of 
utterance — ^not literary finish, or the conditions of 
successful authorship — as will effectively reach the 
human heart. All this, it must be admitted, will 
apply also to writing, *^so that it shall reach the heart." 
So far Dr. Parker's argument seems to me to prove 
nothing in favor of his plan, unless, indeed, it could 
be shown that reading preachers do not honor the 
Holy Ghost by asking guidance in writing, which is 
absurd. But he does raise a good point in another 
connection, namely, that what a man has written in 
" cool blood in his study, and which he reads 
verbatim^ cannot have the help which a congregation 
affords to the urgent, rapid, percussive, and living 
utterance that cannot be printed." "^ 

* The Paraclete, p. 90. 



150 SIGfH EXAMPLES. 

All that can be said, probably, on the subject, is 
that when a minister is convinced in his judgment 
that he can effect more by speaking than reading his 
sermons, and, at any cost of trouble or anxiety, deter- 
mines to do it, he may rely on the Holy Ghost for 
aid, just as in any other duty which is difficult, and 
yet not to be evaded. And I think, in the matter of 
words, he will usually receive that aid. He may not 
necessarily be an eloquent or a successful preacher, 
in the common, popular acceptation ; but one thing 
you will learn, Gentlemen, ih the course of your 
Christian life, that men are very fallible judges of 
our success. All too often "that which is highly 
esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of 
God."^ 

In the next place, some importance is to be at- 
tached to the views and experience of those who 
have rendered good service as preachers. So far as 
there is evidence on the subject, it is plain that in 
the days of great patristic preaching, some variety of 
method obtained, as at present. Some j-ead wholly ; 
some memorized; some prepared material /before- 

* Luke xvi. 15. 



TWO GREAT PREACHERS. 151 

hand ; some literally extemporized^ finding the topic 
in the passage read, or in a passing incident connected 
with the service. ' The Presbyters made, exhortations, 
and their President followed in a longer discourse. 
This we learn from the Apostolical Constitutions^ so 
called. * But the life of true religion had so entirely 
run into rubric and ritual, as it is shadowed to us in 
the Constitutions^ that little weight can be attached 
thereto. 

Probably Chrysostom and Augustine, widely differ- 
ing in style and in substance, would be commonly 
regarded as the best preachers of their age. Both 

* It is not necessary to remind most readers that these literary- 
remains are not of the Apostles, though ostentatiously claiming 
to be, describing the ''Acts of the Apostles," as "our Acts." 
Bunsen thinks they reflect the life of the Church of the second 
and third centuries. The translation best known is Whiston's. 
Believing them to be " the most sacred of the canonical books 
of the New Testament," he has, of course, given them an 
extremely rubrical tone, such as would delight the heart of a 
mry High-Churchman, if, indeed, they did not sometimes go too 
far, as in inculcating the kiss as a part of the service. In all 
likelihood it will be found that an early directory for worship 
has been interpolated to suit the condition of things growing up . 
in the fourth and fifth centuries, when 'f priest," ''sacrifice," 
and even a peculiar dress for the deacon were familiar to the 
Christians. See Book II., § VII., ch. 58. 



152 ^ WILDERNESS. - 

were expository. Both prepared carefully at home. 
Both spoke to the people. Augustine could never 
have preached ten sermons in five days, as he fre- 
quently did, on any other plan. Both were careful in 
their exegesis, with such appliances as they enjoyed. 
Both reached at once the most cultivated and the 
most common intellects. Both made the basis of 
their teaching Scriptural, and both were able to effect 
in their mode of working much more, as far as we can 
see, than in our modern methods of sermonizing. 

The era of the Middle Ages is, as far as preaching is 
concerned, a wilderness resounding with the cries of 
sacerdotal parrots, and relieved only by the monkey- 
tricks of fanatical friars. ISTo language compatible 
with conventional propriety could describe the deg- 
radation of that .time. Ko wonder that Luther, who 
broke through and broke up this state of things, is 
sometimes harsh and coarse. The wonder is, that he 
is so measured. 

But to the point immediately in hand. It is not 
too much, to say that the greatest preachers of Ger- 
many were expository, and were speakers, not read- 
ers. The same is true of the French, the Scottish, 
the English pulpit, even in its two sections — Non- 



MODERN MASTERS. 153 

Conformist and Episcopal. Hookei' did not read. 
The great Puritans spoke after careful preparation ; 
so did the early fathers of the New England 
churches,* as a rule. The same is true of the great 
masters of pulpit eloquence nearer to our own time, 
such as John M. Mason, of this country, and Robert 
Hall, of England. They broke away from the cold, 
philosophic matter, and the neat moralities appropri- 
ately dressed in blameless English, of which Paley 
and Blair were the types. I have not so high an 
estimate of Frederick Robertson as a teacher, as many 
others ; but his attractiveness as a preacher was great. 
His sermons, like the late Dr. Guthrie's and Mr. 
Spurgeon's, were spoken after careful, though (in his 
case) not written preparation. It would be unfair to 
omit, on the other side, that Chalmers read, and 
Candlish, for the most part. 

When I had no more idea of being in the pulpit 
of Dr. James W. Alexander than of being in the 



* From a valuable painting in tlie possession of R. L. Stuart, 
Esq., of New York, presumably accurate, they also wore gown 
and bands, and that when they walked to church in the wilder- 
ness, guarded by armed men, each carrying his firelock and his 
Bible. 



154 T^R' JAMES. W. ALEXANDEB. 

Cabinet, I procured his Thoughts on Preaching. The 
following passage, commending, as the result of 
thought, the plan on which, substantially, I had been 
working, without any thought, afforded me immense 
encouragement : 

" If you press me to say which is absolutely the best 
practice in regard to ' notes,' properly so called, that 
is, in distinction from a complete manuscript, I un- 
hesitatingly say, USE NONE. Carry no scrap of writing 
into the pulpit. Let your scheme, with all its branches, 
be written on your mental tablet. The practice will 
be invaluable. I know a public speaker about my age 
who has never employed a note of any kind. But 
while this is a counsel for which, if you follow it, you 
will thank me as long as you live, I am pretty sure 
you have not courage and self-denial to make the ven- 
ture. And I admit that some great preachers have 
been less vigorous. The late Mr. Wirt, himself one 
of the most classical and brilliant extempore orators of 
America, used to speak in admiration of his pastor, 
the beloved Kevins, of Baltimore. Now, having 
often counseled with this eloquent clergyman, I hap- 
pen to know that while his morning discourses were 
committed to memory, his afternoon discourses were 



LET THE WORDS ALONE. 155 

from a ' brief.' A greater orator than either, who 
was at the same time a friend of both, thus advised a 
young preacher: 'In your case,' said Summerfield, 
' I would recommend the clK)ice of a companion or 
two, with whom you could accustom yourself to open 
and amplify your thoughts on a portion of the word 
of God in the way of lecture. Choose a copious sub- 
ject, and be not anxious to say all that might be said. 
Let your efforts be aimed at giving. a strong outline; 
the fiUing-up will be much more easily attained. 
Prepare a skeleton of your leading ideas, branching 
them off into their secondary relations. This you 
may have before you. Digest well the subject, but 
be not careful to choose your words previous to your 
delivery. Follow out the idea with such language as 
may offer at the moment. Don't be discouraged if 
you fall down a hundred times ; for though you fall 
you shall rise again ; and cheer yourself with the 
prophet's challenge, " "Who hatb despised the day of 
small things?'" If any words of mine could be 
needed to reinforce the opinion of the most enchants 
ing speaker I ever heard, I should employ them in 
fixing in your mind the counsel not to prepare your 
words. Certain preachers, by a powerful and con* 



156 ''MIND IN A LIB RATION" 

straining discipline, have acquired the faculty of men- 
tally rehearsing the entire discourse which they were 
to deliver, with almost the precise language. This is 
manifestly no more extemporaneous preaching than if 
they had written down every word in a book. It is 
almost identical with what is called memoriter preach- 
ing. But if you would avail yourself of the plastic 
power of excitement in a great assembly to create for 
the gushing thought a mold of fitting diction, you 
will not spend a moment on the words, following 
Horace : 

* Verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur. 
" Nothing more effectually ruffles that composure 
of mind which the preacher needs, than to have a 
disjointed train of half -remembered words floating in 
the mind. For which reason few persons have ever been 
successful in a certain method which I have seen pro- 
posed, to wit : that the young speaker should prepare 
his manuscript, give it a thorough reading beforehand, 
and then preach with a general recollection of its 
contents. The result is that the mind is in a libration ' 
and pother, betwixt the word in the paper and the 
probably better word which comes to the tip of the 
tongue. Generally speaking, the best possible woi*d 



" LIKE A MEETING MlNISTEBr , 157 

is the one which is born of the thought in the presence 
of the assembly. And the less you think about words 
as a separate affair, the better they will be. My sed 
ulous endeavor is then to carry your attention back 
to the great earnest business of conveying God's mes- 
sage to the soul ; being convinced that here as else- 
where the seeking of Grod's kingdom and righteous- 
ness will best secure subordinate matters." 

I only add that the estimates of the relative values 
of plans must vary with education and habit. When 
the author of the " Burial of Sir John Moore " was a 
curate in a small parish in the North of Ireland, the 
Presbyterians used to hear him with pleasure in the 
evening, their highest commendation of him being that 
'^ he preached like a meeting minister." On the other 
hand, in many places of New England and America 
generally, a man is not thought worth hearing who 
does not read his sermon. Could a compromise be 
effected on the plan suggested in the following anec- 
dote ? A leading Welsh minister — and Welsh min- 
isters are, I think, among the best preachers — was 
invited to preach an anniversary sermon before one 
of the great societies in London. Naturally anxious 
to disregard no propriety, he consulted the proper 



158 WELSH FIME. 

authority, the secretary. " Should I read my ser- 
mon ? " " Oh, it is no matter ; only bring some 
of your Welsh fire with you." " But you cannot, my 
dear sir, carry fire in paper." " No, that is true ; but 
you may use the paper to kindle the fire ! " 



LECTURE VII. 



We have now reached the point where we can raise 
the question* What, practically, are the characteristics 
of a good sermon ? Then we shall be able to gener- 
alize and speak of good preaching in a continuous 
pastoral work. It will be impossible to escape glanc- 
ing at some ideas already presented ; but they rise to 
our view here, if they rise at all, in new and in quite 
necessary connections. 

The first requisite to a good sermon is that it he 
true. We can get falsehood enough, without employ- 
ing preachers to proclaim it. The devil rules the 
world by lies. A sermon should be like a man, with 
a body, soul, and spirit in it. The body of it ought 
to be truth. Nor is a sermon good simply because 
it is abstract truth. It must be religious truth, 
truth deriving its force and sanctions from the Bible. 
The ethical writers have provided for us an immense 
body of truth, and extremely important truth, which 



160 AUTHOBITY OF THE WORD. 

no wise preacher will disregard. But, as a preacher, 
he is to rest his plea on Divine revelation. Many 
forcible and conclusive arguments can be urged from 
the moralists against fraud and lying, for example. 
The Christian preacher starts almost where they 
leave off when he announces the eighth and ninth 
commandments in form, or in some of the many 
scriptures in which their substance is declared. 
Here is the commanding elevation on which a 
preacher stands above all other speakers to men. 
They rely for cogency and authority on the clearness 
or the beauty in which they can set their points, and 
the closeness with which they can bring them home 
to men. But a true preacher has no sooner made the 
people feel "thus saith the Lord," than he has 
secured authority and cogency. While a man says, 
" I think," his thought is to be measured by himself. 
It is as he is. When he declares, and with recognized 
truth, " the Lord says," men's minds are withdrawn 
from him ; it is with the Lord they have to do. Gen- 
tlemen, you will sometimes feel your " presence weak 
and your speech contemptible," as you preach. The 
people will sometimes, perhaps, look at you, as if 
inquiring by what right you claimed their attention. 



DOUBTFUL DISPUTATIONS. 161 

As soon as it is possible, get yourself out of view alto- 
gether, and let the truth of God come forth to shine 
in its own brightness. This disarms criticism, com- 
pels attention, and secures body to your sermon. 

Settle it in your mind, that no sermon is worth 
much in which the Lord is not the principal speaker. 
There may be poetry, refinement, historic truth, moral 
truth, pathos, and all the charms of rhetoric; but all 
will be lost, for the purposes of preaching, if the word 
of the Lord is not the staple of the discourse ; and 
the preacher will be little better than the wicked, of 
whom it is testified that " God is not in all their 
thoughts." 

2. It must be wppropriate t/ruth^ having the proper 
relation to the people who hear it, and to their 
circumstances. There are ancient heresies, for the 
refutation of which the Bible contains the materials, 
but it would be idle to labor on the setting forth 
of the refutation where no one is troubled, or likely 
to be, with the heresy. There are hard questions, like 
the tripartite nature of man, or the characteristics of 
Hades, on which the Bible has something to say, but 
their discussion before a village congregation of plain 
people would be useless. The circumstances of a 



162 WORDS m SEASON. 

congregation may demand, and to a sympathetic 
mind would suggest, the right kind of theme. It is the 
Communion-Sabbath, for example. The sermon is a 
discussion of the law of tithes. It is an important 
law, and the sermon may be most true, but it 
is a right thing in the wrong place. The death 
of a pastor much beloved produces a deep feeling of 
solemnity among the bereaved people. How entirely 
an elaborate sermon on an important theme like the 
breadth of God's law may be thrown away, where a 
simple, earnest, affectionate word, from such a 
text as a minister desired to be laid on his bosom 
in liis coffin, ^'Remember the word which I spake 
unto you," that his people might read it, or a 
plea for Him who died once and dieth no more, 
might reach all hearts. A nice instinct — the product 
of thought, sympathy, knowledge of human nature, 
and prayer — ought to guide in selecting the theme. 
If you have chosen well, your work is half done when 
you have read your text. Every one feels that you 
understand the situation, in some sense understand 
him. He is prepared to listen, and puts his mind in 
the attentive attitude : the fault will be yours if 
you lose your advantage. On the other hand, a re- 



AGAINST THE STREAM, 163 

mote and inappropriate topic vexes ; produces a jar ; 
is regarded as a kind of impertinence. You are row- 
ing against the stream ; your sermon will be in a 
great measure thrown away. "When a man goes to a 
place on Saturday night and finds his sermon out of 
all relations to the people, he had better put it in his 
bag, -shut himself up, and write out what, if he were 
in their place, he would feel suited him, and preach 
that. For all the purposes of a sermon, it will be 
more successful than his best effort that lies outside 
their horizon. 

Here, I need not tell you, comes to the minis- 
ter's aid his thorough acquaintance with his people. 
He feels with them. Their hearts throb, in a meas- 
ure, against his bosom. He knows their needs, and, 
though his manner may be unpretending and his 
message simple and unadorned, it suits them, as cold 
water the thirsty. 

The man who studies fitness above all else, will 
have great help given him in complying with 
rhetorical canons. He will be instructive. The people 
need to know something just then. They want to be 
told how they ought to think and feel. He tells them 
from the Word. In his eagerness to do this he is 



164 ■ LOOKING RIGHT ON, 

textually faithful. He desires to reflect its meaning. 
He is teaching from the Word. More than mere natu- 
ral and legitimate curidsity influences them. They 
wish direction on a particular matter. He is bent on 
giving it. He is not drawn aside for the sake of some 
vivid bit of word-painting that could be brought in, 
or the presentation of some new and original specula- 
tion. He is not careful whether they count him 
intellectual or not. They need, and he has, ideas ; 
and he gives them, on one matter. This secures 
unity in his discourse, ^ut fidelity to the text, instruct- 
ivenessy and unity ^ have always been placed in the 
forefront among the constituent elements of a good 
sermon. 

3. It must be truth, taught for the purposes of the 
truth. God has revealed ideas for certain definite ends. 
A good preacher sets them forth for these ends. He 
proclaims that law which is holy, for the awakening 
of sinners and the guiding of the lives of believers. 
He lifts up Christ for the sake of attracting lost souls 
to the cross. This banishes subtle, treacherous, arro- 
gant, proud, rebellious self. I have a good sermon, 
let me suppose, on the happiness of heaven. It pleases 
me, and mainly because it does, and is likely to make 



FORBEABmO THREATENmG. 165 

a good impression in my favor, I preach it. Can 
I expect the blessing, as if I had reverently asked 
what these souls most needed among God's gifts, 
and had decided to show it to them, no matter what 
they thought of me ? 

This idea might be expressed in another way. 
Truth should be uttered in a right sjpirit, A 
man may set out the doom of the wicked in a tone 
of human threatening and bravado, as though he 
said, "This is what you will come-to for disregarding 
my advice, and you well deserve it." This is enough 
to mar the truest sermon. A vitiating element goes 
with every sentence, when once the impression has 
been made that the preacher is Vexed that men do 
not believe him. My brethren, remember two words 
spoken to masters (and the reason of them applies to 
you), " forbearing threatening, knowing that your 
Master also is in heaven." I know the sanctions of 
God's law are to be proclaimed. If any are silent 
regarding them, 1 am sorry for them and for their 
people. But I also know that the first place in 
which the terrors of the Lord are to make their 
impression is on the heart of the preacher, and 
that their true effect there is to make him not 



166 THE REDEEMERS TEARS. 

terrible, or terrific, but tender and persuasive. 
" Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord," the 
holiness of his law, the strictness of his justice, 
the ineradicable hatred with which he regards sin, 
the awfulness of being under his wrath, the fear- 
fulness of falling as rebels into his hands — knowing 
these things 'from his word, ^^we persuade men." 
Let us remember, when we fling around with an 
unholy, brawling flippancy the awful denunciations of 
" tribulation and anguish," that w^e may be anticipat- 
ing the sentence of those dearest to us, not to say our 
own. Let these truths be preached as fully as they 
are stated in the Bible, but with tenderness, with 
indescribable pity, with tears, such as Jesus shed over 
doomed Jerusalem.^ 



* A friend wrote me lately that lie had heard the late Canon 
Kingsley preach in Westminster Abbey a sermon of peculiarly 
solemn and tender interest. My friend says : 

* ' I do not know whether that was the last sermon ever he 
delivered, but it might well have been. Had he known it was 
almost the last message from heaven to man that he was to 
deliver I do not think he Avould have wished to change one word 
of it. His subject was Christ weeping over Jerusalem, and the 
particular passage, * but ye would not,* the whole being a prac- 
tical application of the ineffable love of God to man, and deliv- 



"SPEAK well:' 167 

4. It should sustain the attention. Profit ends 
when wea/riness hegins. ITot only so, but vexation 
with the preacher is apt to commence also. ITow, 
attention is sustained by many forces in harmonious 
combination. If the voioe be too low and indis- 
tinct the ear grows tired in catching the words. 
If it be occasionally loud and rough, the ear is 
offended, as is the eye with grotesque, awkward, 
or constrained action. If the words come too 
rapidly the sense is confused : if very slowly, like 
minute-guns at sea, the hearer grows impatient. 
A dull monotone is soporific : so is a continu- 
ous shout. There ought to be naturalness in the 
voice, and along with that periods of repose. 
Then there is room for emphasis, for expression, 
for variety of modulation. Otherwise Pope's lines 

ered in the most simple, but tender and touching language 
I ever heard. 

** We were only sorry when he concluded, although he 
preached a long sermon. He said that it might be the last time^ 
some of those tliere might hear his voice." 

Who of us can tell when he is preaching his last sermon ? 
Charles Kingsley, in earlier years, lacked the power that comes 
from clear, definite conviction as to the one way of life ; but he 
had even then many of the elements that make a great man and 
a great preacher. 



168 VIVAGITF OF STYLE. 

on commonplace versification are likely to be 
made good : 

" If crystal streams * witK pleasing murmurs creep,' 
The hearer*s threatened — not in vain — with sleep/* 

But the composition may be monotonous, un- 
broken by incident, anecdote, or appeal, the ca- 
dences of sentences constructed on one model, 
rising and falling with a painful regularity. This 
should be guarded against. Vivacity of style is 
attainable, and applicable to any subject. He who 
spake in parables, who laid the birds, the lilies, 
the vines, the mustard-plant, the children under 
contribution for His discourses — 3is who " spake 
as never man spake " — surely sets an example 
to us as teachers. Language is singularly pliable, 
and its graces are appreciated even by the rude. 
The taste is not always correct. Indeed, taste 
itself is a variable element. Hervey's Meditations 
•among the Tomis had, and still have, admirers. 
Jeremy Taylor, I know, has been extolled greatly, 
yet I have never felt the charm of his prose- 
poetry. Edward Irving has been regarded most 
favorably by many, yet his style has seemed to 



NO STAGE-TRIGKS. 169 

me stilted and affected. Yet I am sure, had I 
listened to any one of the three great men, I 
should have been made and kept attentive by 
the departure of the style from what is common- 
place and indolent. I should have felt that each 
was trying to speak so that it would be agree- 
able to me to hear. So much we owe to our 
hearers. The effort is not incompatible with sim- 
plicity, force, and freedom from affectation. 

There should be m>anliness both in composition 
and delivery. Any trick obviously meant to startle ; 
any attempt at stage-effect ; any small device that 
might be proper enough in an after-dinner speech 
is felt to be unworthy the pulpit, and is con- 
demned by good taste. Manliness implies straight- 
forward simplicity, appreciation of the truths pre- 
sented, and superiority to theatrical expedients. 
Many of the stories^ retailed in gossiping re- 
ports regarding eminent men are either colored 
or exaggerated ; but there are well-authenticated 
accounts of great men descending to small shifts 
of ingenuity which you and I had better not 
imitate, and which even they could not have used 
often with success. For a certain gravity is ex- 
8 



170 GRAVE WITH GRAVE MATTERS 

pected, through a right human instinct, in minis- 
ters. Not that the particular attitude of the facial 
muscles is of any spiritual significance, one way 
or other ; but men feel that while we are hand- 
ling grave and most serious -matters we ought to 
be serious. Did you ever see the pilot take a 
ship through a perilous passage ? He is grave. 
I have seen the surgeon's knife drawn round the 
limb where an error of an inch would have been 
a terrible mistake. He was grave. I have heard a 
conscientious judge weigh and set out in the ut- 
most fullness the evidence in a murder case, as 
earnestly bent on putting everything fairly as if 
his own life depended on the issue. Any levity 
here would be out of place ; and, on the same 
principle, by the average of mankind, gravity will 
be looked for in us who deal with matters of 
life and death, and speak for God. . That we have 
laughing muscles in the face is prima facie evi- 
dence that we are at liberty to laugh sometimes ; 
but we have *a great' many muscles that have no 
special relation to preaching. All the power we 
gain by appeals to the risible faculties, we are 
likely to lose in other directions. Our attractive- 



HEART AND TONGUE. 171 

ness, then, had better depend on clearness of enun- 
ciation and style, on natural grace of expression, on 
manliness, force, and sufficient rapidity of movement, 
and on vehemence not out of proportion to the 
temper and tone of the matter we utter. The best 
preacher will be apt to suggest the language of the 
Psalm, " My heart was not within me, while I was 
musing the fire burned : then spake I with my tongue." 
6. Good preaching should be persuasive. The 
motives, pleas, arguments, and appeals of the Bible 
should be presented in such a way as to lead 
men to move in the . desired direction. Young 
preachers expect that reasons so cogent as they 
can state will ^command the assent and correspond- 
ing action of men. But, in point of fact, men 
are not thus uniformly moved.. Men must be not 
only reasoned with, but convinced of your good 
will toward them. They have to be conciliated 
to unpalatable truth. The tone of tlie voice, the 
expression of face, the attitude of deference, or 
of imperious authority assumed toward them — 
all these have their influence. A remorseless 
logic, clear and irresistible by a logician, will be 
set at defiance by many a human heart that 



1 72 ' " DEAR REABEEBr 

would be influenced by a tone of tenderness in 
the voice, or a tear, in the eye. ISTot that the 
tears are to supersede the argument, but " to ac- 
company it, and carry its force from the head to 
the heart. You may hear men preach where they 
seem to pierce, crush, and trample upon their op- 
ponents; and tliey make etery hearer an opponent. 
Indignation, scorn, sarcasm, ridicule, all come into 
•play ; and the preacher, having it all his own way, 
treats himself to a triumph at the close. This 
is not persuasive. It lacks the first elements of 
true preaching. We should never assume hos- 
tility to us, or our views, on the part of our 

-^hearers. By their /being in the house of God, 
and reverently and respectfully listening to us, His 

.ministers, they give us the right to assume that 
they are not opponents but inquirers, not dis- 
putants but pupils. Let us treat them as learners, 

* keep them as much as possible from the attitude of 
opposition, and carry them along without remind- 
ing them needlessly how much of their previous 
thinking we have beaten down.^ Let us study 

* The principle of this may be sometimes acted upon with 
advantage in intercourse with the members of a congregation. 



AN OLD MASTER, 173 

His example who " reasoned in the Synagogue 
every Sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the 
Greeks P (Acts xviii. 4.) 

How often has the method of that, great master of 
pulpit eloquence, at Athens, been noticed and ap- 
plauded. He begins with the facts lying around — - 
the statues of the gods, the altars, the sacrifices. He 
even utters a word of commendation, of which our 
English version missed the point, making it " too 
superstitious." "I perceive that you are very re- 
ligious." '^Devout to excess" is Lewin's render- 
ing of the word, dsKjiSeipioysarepov^. They were 
proud of their religiousness.^ Instead of being hurt 
by the allusion, they feel complimented. The men 
who politely said to him, " May we know what 

Almost every community contains persons who are ^' nothing if 
not critical." Their importance lies in their peculiar ideas. They 
are delighted to give the new minister their '* views." The 
young minister wiil be wise to evade the interview. Do not let 
these men commit themselves to their positions. Do not even 
hear, from them, their opinions. If you do, their self-love will 
set down half your teaching to the effort at refutation. Let 
them hear you, and possibly learn. 

* See Lewin's Life and Epistles of St. Paul, Vol. I. , p. 262 (note). 
Tliis beautiful work throws much light on the apostle's jour- 
neys, and is worthy of careful examination. 



174 LIGHT AND LOVE. 

tliis new doctrine, whereof tliou speakest, is?'Vare 
not thrown off and repelled by any contemptuous al- 
lusion ; nor is the attention fixed on any arguments 
but such as the hearers might be expected to appre- 
ciate and understand. " One of their own poets ", is 
gracefully introduced, and the whole surroundings of 
a judicial court suggest to the speaker the impressive 
closing announcement of a final judgment, assured to 
all men by the raising of the Saviour from the dead. 
So when King Agrippa owns the force of Paul's ap- 
peal it is, " Almost thou persuadest me to be a Chris- 
tian." So, gentlemen, in your preaching aim not 
only at showing .abundance of '^dry light ; " let there 
be also the glow of affectionate interest that gives 
persuasive power. Let there be not body only, but 
also heart. 

6. The sermon ought to be evangelical through 
and through, in body, soul and spirit. The word 
evangelical, in so far as it marks a party, I am 
sorry to employ. I use it here to mean full of the gos- 
pel of Jesus Christ. We are His messengers. What 
shall we do but deliver His message? It would be 
strange, indeed, if the thoughts and words and tone of 
the Master did not appear in what we His servants 



*' m THE FACE OF JESUSr 1Y5 

say and do. We are to enlighten men. He is the 
light of life. We are to comfort men. He furnishes 
the comforts. We are to show men salvation. He 
is the Saviour. We are to strengthen men. He is 
their strength. We are to encourage men to holy 
obedience. He is the source of motive, of strength, 
of courage, and He is the perfect example. We are 
to guide men to the Father. He is the mediator. 
We are to show aliens how reconciliation is to be ef- 
fected. He is the way. All out of Him are out of 
the way. He is the truth. To be out of Him is to 
be in deadly error. He is the life. To be out of 
Him is to continue " dead in trespasses and in sins." 
^^No man cometh unto the Father but. hy Him." 
And when the Father would give men the light of 
the knowledge of His glory, how does He proceed ? 
Why (2 Cor. iv. 6), He shines into their hearts. And 
how ? To what does He turn men's gaze ? JSTot to 
His mighty works ; not to creative or providential 
wonders ; not to geological or astronomical facts ; not 
to the data on which Paley and Bell, and other ad- 
mirable writers build up their argument from design ; 
not to the still greater wonders of mind, but to " the 
face of Jesus Christ" — that face that was more 



176 THE DIYINE APPEAL. 

marred that any man's ; that endured the rufSan . 
blows ; down which the blood-drops trickled ; that 
looked down on a mocking crowd from an ignomini- 
ous cross. To that the Father points, as though He 
said, "Look at that spectacle — my Son, my holy, in- 
nocent Son, wounded for your transgressions, bruised 
for your iniquities. See in Him the holiness of my 
law, the rigor of my justice. See in Him the 
depth and tenderness of my love. Believe the love I 
have toward you, and give your hearts to me, in Him." 
This is God's method, my brethren. It is childish 
to inquire can we have any better ? "We have no 
choice about it. He gives you and me the gospel, of 
which Jesus is the sum, in His glorious person. His 
completed work, His effectual intercession, and He 
says to us, " Go preach the preaching that I bid thee.'' 
Let us go in His name and strength. 



LECTURE VIII. 



A LADY friend of mine tells me the following inci- 
dent : A young lady, who was placed at the head of 
a house before she had become a good housekeeper, 
had to order dinner for her husband and herself. 
She had chickens for dinner the first day ; the next a. 
leg of mutton ; and the third day, naturally desiring 
variety, she ordered the cook to have a leg of beef ! 
So young preachers, not yet acquainted practically 
with their materials and the use they can make of 
them, feel the need of freshness and noyelty, and sac- 
rifice utility in the efi'ort. I propose to devote this 
hour to the consideration of the best arrangement and 
distribution of our pulpit resources. If in anything 
my views seem to confiict with the ideas or the prac- 
tices of other brethren, I need not say you will take 
them for what thej^ are worth, and remember that it 
is by comparison of reasons and of experience that 
we reach conclusions of practical value. 
8* 



178 A PORTION TO EACH. 

(a) There is much dass-jpreaoliing, " Young men," 
^' the aged," " the young," are singled out, and for- 
mall}^ addressed. The division is sometimes carried 
out very minutely, and I have known ''young women," 
'^ the married," and '^ the single " specially addressed. 
" The working classes," are often so specified in Great 
Britain. A friend of mine heard a sermon in Ireland 
where the preacher descanted on the temptations to 
which men are liable. He divided them into the 
" temptations to the upper classes " and the " tempt- 
ations to the lower classes." He always said " we " 
and " our " under the first head, never under the 
second. 

I have some doubt of the wisdom of this course, 
though it cannot be denied that good and able men 
have effected much on such plans. But then they 
would have done good in any form of discussion of 
the truth into which they threw their thoughts ; and it 
does not follow that this way is wise generally, be- 
cause it has been made useful. When John the Bap- 
tist gave directions to publicans and soldiers, in classes, 
it was at their own request. 

In the first place, the teaching of the Scripture is 
not formally distributed in this way. Every person 



ALL 8GRIPTUBE FOR ALL. 179 

has the strongest inducement to read the whole Bible. 
The whole field is digged by the sons of God, in the 
search for the treasure they want ; and with the best 
results. ISTor is the Scripture in any great degree a 
set of rules or rubrics, like the by-laws of a company, 
or the instructions to a ship's crew, but a set of great 
dominant principles, to be received into the heart, 
and to be intelligently applied to the affairs and exi- 
gencies of life. The application exercises and strength- 
ens all the faculties. In the finding, digesting, and 
living out of truth, the whole man grows up in the 
likeness of Christ. The maiden does not find her 
chapter in the Bible from which she passes away 
when she comes among the mothers, to find her new 
section ready for her — but the whole Bible is the 
common heritage of mother and maiden. 

There is danger of impairing habits of attention on 
this plan. When young men are being appealed to 
other classes in the audience will easily persuade 
themselves that they may be absent, or less attentive. 
It is desirable to keep all one's hearers alive to all 
that is being said. His special portion, let each man 
feel, may come in the next sentence. Let him be on 
the look-out for it. Give him no intimation that he 



180 ENLIST THE MEN. 

is not concerned here, and may go mentally to 
repose. 

Besides, the tendency is already great enough to 
hear — not for ourselves, but — for others. My obser- 
yation is, that a sermon to young men in an ordinary 
church does not increase the attendance of that class 
in any noticeable degree, while there are preachers 
whose happiness it is to have a large, even a pre- 
dominant, element of men — and there conid be no 
greater happiness — in habitual attendance. It is a 
thoroughly inspiriting thing to ' see a mass of those 
to whom you can emphatically say, "Men and 
brethren ! " I thint we should aim at the men. Be 
manly, vigorous, courageous. Reason out of the 
Scriptures. Put the hearers' minds to work, and 
bring divine truth to bear^on manly pursuits, and so 
clear off the aspersion that religion is for women and 
children. But while we are doing this with such effect 
as to bring the men, the women and children will not 
be missing. 

It may seem as if some exception might be made 
in favor of preaching to children. But, as the years 
have gone on, I have modified my own views of that 
matter. I used to make sermons for the children 



CHILDBEN AT THE TABLE, 181 

specially, constructed and illustrated with, regard to 
them ; and it is quite true that the seniors usually 
gave good attention to them, and often heard with 
profit. But then the efiect on the children is. to be 
considered when your ordinary ministrations are 
proceeding. They had their portion. ITow you are 
talking to the grown-up people. They may be ex- 
cused from listening now. I think the wiser way is 
to throw in every day a bit of anecdote, or illustration 
that will -suit the child-mind. Give no intimation 
that it is coming. But if you will say, " The children 
will see," or something of that nature, they are re- 
minded that they are an integral portion of the con- 
gregation, and they get the habit of attending 
throughout. After the children get out of the 
nursery, I suppose in most families they get their 
meals at table with father and mother, hear the talk, 
and learn the ways of life. I think it is best for them 
to be similarly treated in the Church, and as a wise 
parent will do the carving and dividing so as to give 
the children what is fit for them, so a wise pastor 
will give to them their milk and their portion of meat, 
as they are able to bear it. When you become 
pastors, gentlemen, aim at bringing the children to 



182 FACTITIO US INTEUEST. 

Church with the parents. They soon learn to " be- 
have themselves in the House of God,'^ and no stated 
service is all that it ought to be that is wholly and 
entirely without adaptation to •them. It will be a 
sad abuse of a great blessing, if the Sabbath-school 
shall come to be regarded a^s the suflScient " Chil- 
dren's Church." Let us teach them to worship God 
with their fathers; let them be witnesses of bap- 
tisms and communions : they are part of the house- 
hold. 

(b) Announced preaching I do not regard with great 
favor. A man has, or his friends feel that he has, 
something out of the way to say, arui he looks up a 
smart running title, and gives it out, or the news- 
paper does for him. You may see this in the New 
York newspapers any Saturday. I have never 
thought this a good plan, and would advise my 
brethren not to adopt it. It is regarded as a confes- 
sion of general weakness. Your common things, it 
could hardly be supposed, would attract ; but here is 
a sermon on " the iron that did swim, " or the ^' little 
foxes, " or Samson's foxes, or " Jehudi's penknife, " 
and it is hoped the people will hear you thereon. 
And when there is no announcement, why, of course, 



COMPETITIVE PBEAGHmQ. 183 

the fair inference is, there is nothing peculiar ; nothing 
worth hearing ; nothing but the gospel ! 

Among the incidental evils of this announcing sys- 
tem, is the effect it has on the Christian community. 
There are enough of gypsies already, unattached 
hearers, who '' go around " and hear the most 
" interesting " preachers. You get them the first 
time you are " announced," perhaps the second. But 
meantime your neighbor, or his deacons, will have 
taken note of the fact, and a rival announcement is 
in the field. You get out Goliath; he proclaims 
Samson. You intimate the Royal Dancing-Girl ; 
and he forthwith produces the Witch of Endor, and 
the poor uninstructed owners of itching ears and 
vacant minds have a good time, and persuade them- 
selves they are talking religion when discussing the 
relative merits of the performances. Let us leave all 
this to the Lyceum, the Lecturing Bureau, and the 
showmen. Let us be willing to go down as low as is 
needed to lift up sinners ; but it is lue that are to go 
down. This is to drag down the sacred desk, the 
office of the ministry, the Bible itself. Competitive 
rowing and running, and competitive oratory, may 
be well enough for the boys in school and college ; 



184 " OCCASIONAL SERMOJSfSr 

but competitive preaching is not among the elevating 
^ forces in the hand of the Church. And, as a rule, 
the least instructed hearers are those who have " heard 
everybody ! " 

(c) Special preaching^ as a general rule, costs much 
and yields poor returns. JBy special preaching, 1 
mean the sermons that are fitted to remarkable occa- 
sions — as the more formal Thanksgiving sermons, ser- 
mons on popular movements, and critical periods in 
the church's or the country's' historj^ The interest 
in them is centered largely ini the preacher's attitude 
to the subject. He is defining his position ; he is 
maintaining his ground or his consistency ; and the 
people have the pleasing satisfaction of sitting in 
judgment on him. 

But, you say, should no notice be taken of the 
great events, the majestic steps of Jehovah's provi- 
dence ? I do not say that. I am for noticing them ; 
and when you can get men like Chalmers and Robert 
Hall to descant on such events as the death of the 
Princess Charlotte, I am in favor of giving their efforts 
the widest publicity. But to ordinary men there is a 
better way. Two examples occur to me at this mo- 
ment. The late Prince Albert, husband of Queen 



.: MEASURING MEN. 185 

Victoria, died on the Sabbath, and it was my duty to 
preach that evening. • The subject for the evening 
was discussed in the usual way, and at some fitting 
time the event was alluded to with its lesson, and 
then prayer was offered for the newly-widowed 
Queen. It was one of the few cases I have wit- 
nessed where audible sobbing disturbed the preacher. 
Had a special sermon been made of it, the effect, I 
feel very sure, would have been less, and less salutary. 
The other occasion of which I think was the assassin- 
ation of President Lincoln. I remember the spot 
where I heard it, and how it made my head swim. 
The very next service it was referred to, in some 
connection in the sermon, with marked effect, which 
no one could help noticing. Kow, suppose in these 
cases the expectatioia of the people raised by the 
announcement of a special sermon, every lawyer, 
every man that ever made a speech, every man 
almost, has a double train of thought in his mind — 
that which the event itself suggests to him, and that 
which relates to your treatment of the theme. '' He 
has a great, stirring topic ; he has announced it ; he 
has taken time for special preparation ; now let us see 
is lie equal to the occasion. " This is an unfavorable 



186 FUNEBAL SERMONS. 

condition of mind for receiving spiritual impression ; 
and you keep your hearers out of it by avoiding the 
" special " element. 

I am inclined to put among the " specials '^ a great 
proportion of the funeral addresses. Now and then 
an outstanding and prominent Christian challenges 
notice, and is felt by common consent to deserve it in 
the pulpit. But, as a general rule, you will find 
funeral sermons the hardest, and the least productive 
of good, among your efforts. A tender-hearted man 
is eager to speak responsively to the warm feelings 
of bereaved and mourning relatives to whom the de- 
ceased has been so much, and who, in their fresh grief, 
think only of his virtues. But he cannot, ordinarily, 
spea:k as strongly as they feel ; and in the effort he 
may speak with an emphasis, the foundation of which 
is not recognized by the rest of his audience. The 
general hearer, to whom the deceased is described in 
the strongest terms that delineate saintship, will 
measure your language next Sabbath-day by the ap- 
plication of it which he witnessed, and will conclude 
that exalted Christian character is of easier attainment 
than he had understood ; for our 'hearers often know 
the departed better than we do. The obituary notices 



CONNEGTEB DISCOURSES 187 

in the Scripture are commonly brief, and those of the 
pulpit are commonly too long. Tou will do wisely 
to begin and go through this most difficult and deli- 
cate part of your ministerial labor with a moderate 
and measured use of language ; nor will you lose by 
this in the end. The judgment and conscience of the 
Christian people will be with you; and you will com- 
monly find the ripest and most cultivated Christians 
anxious beforehand that the least possible personal 
description of them should be given at their funerals. 
Now, you may suppose that the elimination of 
these " occasional efforts " will leave little but the 
dead level monotony of the regular sermon, as much 
like its predecessor and its successor as one hymn- 
book is like another. This, however, is by no means 
the case. In lieu of the foregoing expedients for 
keeping up interest, let there be vigorous consecutive 
teaching. For this provision may be made in various 
ways. One is by sequence of thought. Christ, as 
the mediator, has been, let us say, your theme on one 
Lord's Day. His functions as Priest, as Prophet, as 
King, may follow in succession. Or in connection 
with any one of these you branch off into the col- 
lateral truth, of the lack in man that necessitates the 



188 ^ SERIES OF SERMON'S 

office, and how it is supplied. From the kingly 
office of Christ yon may pass to the forms of 
obedience we render, the immunities we enjoy, the 
prospects before us. Care is taken to say, " Last 
Lord's Day we saw, etc. To-day, we follow it up by 
considering," etc. The hearers gradually get the 
notion that yon have a plan ; that you are aiming at 
instructing them; and commonly their minds will 
meet you half way. Good is done when you dis- 
possess them of the idea that you go to the tradi- 
tional sermon-store and take out whatever comes 
easiest to hand. Or there may be formal sequence, 
as when you intimate a course of sermons. Once a 
year a minister might, with gx^eat advantage, have 
such a course. The Lord's Prayer, the Ten Com- 
mandments, the Miracles of our Lord, the Parables, 
the Epistles to the Churches, furnish materials for 
such continuous and connected addresses. Biog- 
raphy, history, the beatitudes, the arguments of the 
Epistles, may make the subjects of such instruction. 
The minor prophets, each of them furnishing mate- 
rial for a sermon in which you popularize what is 
commonly called " introduction," furnish a most 
useful line of instruction. Take the average 



THE BIBLE TTNKNO WN, 189 

young person in our congregation and Hd him find 
Amos. He is mentally paralyzed for a moment. It 
takes liim a little time to collect his scattered faculties 
to the unfamiliar task. Then begins a nervous 
turning of handfuls of leaves^ with a concurrent 
mental effort to run over the list of the prophets in his 
mind, so as, if possible, to locate Amos. And all this 
is typical of his mental state regarding the contents^ 
of Amos. There is to many a sort of Sahara in the 
middle of their Bibles which they should be made to 
explore. • Genesis they know, and something about 
Moses, and David, and Goliath ; and the IN'ew Testa- 
ment they know; but Hosea, and Zephaniah, and 
Ezekiel, who are these? Gentlemen, at the risk of 
seeming to repeat a cuckoo-song, let me declare again 
and again, that what is most wanted among profess- 
ing Christians is knowledge of their Bibles. 
Christians know too little of it ; skeptics know but 
little of it, and great masses of the otherwise intelli- 
gent but ungodly of our population do not know it at 
all. Ignorance of it is the soil in which the rank 
growths of ^^isms" of every kind flourish. Nor is 
this ignorance only among the rude peasantry from 
foreign lands, such as are transported across the con- 



190 THE INDUCTIVE METHOD. 

tinent to be drawers of water for Mormonism. It is 
surprising to every man who has looked into it. how 
many native-born Americans from Maine, New 
Hampshire, Yermont, Massachusetts, and New York, 
shrewd, well-informed, posted in all newspaper 
themes, are yet lamentably ignorant of the letter of 
their Bibles. It is essential to the growth of piety 
and virtue to change all this. Never mind whether 
yon are thought learned, eloquent, strong, or accom- 
plished. You shall not have lived in vain if it can 
be written over your grave, " He made the people 
understand the Scriptures." 

It is not needful to remind you of the two quite 
•distinct methods of pursuing knowledge which have 
been employed by men. In the one the inquirer forms 
a theory, and then looks around for the facts to fit 
into it. This plan charmed the daring, brilliant, 
Oriental mind. On the other he collects his facts, and 
enough of them, and builds up his theory on them. 
Practical Rome was more inclined to this method. 
With the introduction of Christianity, the human mind 
received a mighty impetus, and, as we see in the 
vigorous preaching of Augustine, turned to the way 
of dealing with the data, and founding on them the 



THE FACTS AND THE TEXTS. 191 

theory. With the growth of superstition, the Aristo- 
telian method was resumed, and we get to the elabo- 
rate trifling of the Schoolmen, whose theology 
resembled, in subtlety and in want of foundation, 
the Greek philosophy. The Reformation broke 
up these card-board castles that men had con- 
structed, and sent men after the fashion of Augustine 
to the great mass of data in the Scriptures. Bacon's 
inductive method set men to the study of nature. 
The result is apparent in the material advances of 
modern times. Three hundred years of inductive 
philosophy have done more to enable men to rule 
over and subdue the earth than a thousand preceding 
years 

*' Through aU their creeping dark duration/' 

Now we want this Baconian method applied to the 
Bible-study. What facts are in nature, as in gases, in 
minerals, in atoms, to the student of matter, Bible 
texts are to the theologian. These we sift, examine, 
analyze, classify. Instead of evolving conceptions 
and theories from our own brain — like the crystalline 
spheres with which Ptolemy filled the heavens — • 
brilliant and baseless — and proving them by our 



192 WELL-FOUNDED THEORIES. 

conceptions of the fitness of things, we build tnem 
up on the well-ascertained data of revelation. They 
are no stronger than their foundation. If we have 
reasoned rightly they are as strong. As the measure of 
the power of a chain or a machine is the strength of 
its weakest point, so our theories and conclusions are 
no stronger than our weakest reasonings regarding 
the revealed truths. But working on this plan with 
the modesty of true science, intensified because we 
are dealing with the declarations of the living God, 
we go from strength to strength, every conquest we 
make being assured, and every trophy we take hav- 
ing inscribed on it, '' ISTot unto us, O Lord, not unto 
us, but unto Thy name be the glory." Nor can you 
fail to see that this plan honors God the speaker, as 
true philosopliy honors God the worker. Here are 
facts that do not fit into my philosophy. Then the 
philosophy must give way to the facts. We must 
keep our system open, so to speak, till a place is 
found for the facts. Herein religious thought are 
truths and texts that do not fit into -my system. 
Then my system must give way to them. It does 
not support the texts ; the texts must support it. If 
they do not, it goes down, and it ought to go down. 



'' THE CHRISTIAN TEAR." 193 

For man is not a creator, but an observer ; not even 
so much an inventor as a discoverer. He does not, 
4nhis best philosophy, set out with a daring guess as 
to centric and concentric circles in the heavens. He 
begins with the falling apple, the sparkling dewdrop, 
the shining candle on the earth. He works upward 
to stars and suns. The task is slow, unambitious, and 
toilsome, but the reward is sure. ISTow true theology 
is the counterpart of that acquisition, the written 
word of God corresponding to the glorious works of 
God. We toil among texts and words, instead of 
starting from without and above, with a comprehen- 
sive philosophy evolved from our own consciousness. 
Our path is lowly, and at first obscure, but it shineth 
more and more unto the perfect day. 

Our friends of the Episcopal Church have retained 
from pre-Reformation times the " Church Year," 
with its Christmas and Easter, and other holy times 
connected in the thought of the Church with the 
events of the Church's founding. The good and the 
strength derived in this way are not unmixed, but a 
certain variety of theme is secured. They have not, 
indeed, in England, retained any firmer hold on the 
people thereby. Take the southern portion of Great 
9 



194 THE TEST OF EXPERIENCE. 

Britain, in which this system with all the prestige and 
influence of an establishment was set forth, and after 
a couple of centuries there is not an established 
Church in Christendom with so many pronounced dis- 
senters from it as the English. And when men leave 
it, they leave the bishop, the prayer-book, and the 
Christian year behind absolutely. No dissenting 
community has attempted to reproduce them. Take 
Scotland, on the other hand, with no such arrange- 
ments, with a poor establishment, frowned on habitu- 
ally by power, and without prestige. It, too^ has had 
dissenters from its pale, numerous and earnest. But 
when they have gone, it has not been in protest 
against the Church institutions, but for them. They 
have gone in an effort to keep them pure. None of 
them renounce Presbytery, their Confession, or their 
Catechism. Every " body " sets up its own Presbyt- 
ery, instates in authority the Confession and the 
Catechism, All this I mention to show that a very 
exaggerated idea may be entertained of the power to 
interest and retain of the festivals and anniversaries 
of that " Church Year," around which Keble wove 
the chaplets of a very attractive Christian poesy. 
But in another way we may attain all the variety we 



*' WHAT MEAN YE'' 195 

need, and witho.ut any element of weakness. We 
can call out and promote a true churcli-life, on tlie 
line of our New Testament institutiouKS. "When the 
ordinance of baptism is adniinistered, let all the truth 
therewith connected be brought before the people 
regularly, patiently, diligently. When the young 
become communicants, let the nature of a Christian 
profession be explained and the duty enforced ; and 
so we realize all the benefits without any of the 
weakness of " confirmation." When the Lord's Sup- 
per is observed — and it ought probably to be more 
frequent than it is — all the mystery and charm of 
incarnation, all the majesty of law met by substitu- 
tion, the one for the many and the innocent for the 
guilty, and all the pleading pathos of the crucifixion, 
may pass under review, appealing at once to judg- 
ment, conscience, memory, and aifections. This may 
seem to you a kind of truism, a thing so obviously 
right that no need exists to enforce it. Tou are mrs- 
taken here. The Lord's Supper is sometimes ob- 
served with very little reference to it in sermon or 
prayers, little foregoing instruction, little subsequent 
helps to recall obligation and strive after consis- 
tency. 



196 TRUE CHUBGHMANSHIP. 

So, when the choice and ordination of an officer be- 
comes the duty of the Church, should we have the 
exposition of popular rights and responsibilities, and 
the divine, scriptural warrant for ordination. The 
Church's nature, and the Church's functions as a 
living organism of which Jesus Christ is the head 
and the Hojy Ghost is the heart, come under notice, 
and the church-life is maintained concurrently with 
the life of the individual soul. 

If it be said that this course fosters undue and ex- 
cessive thought regarding the Church, and brings 
men into that undesirable temper known as sectari- 
anism or bigotry, the reply is at hand. An intelli- 
gent acquaintance with the principles underlying 
church-life is not the soil in which bigotry flourishes. 
It is the ignorant who are sectarian. It is one thing 
to understand what we mean in baptizing, ordaining, 
and commemorating the Saviour's love ; it is quite an- 
other, ignorantly and arrogantly, to despise those who 
think differently. As a general rule, the most practi- 
cally catholic Christians are those who have the most 
intelligent acquaintance with their Church principles, 
and the most enlightened attachment thereto ; even 
as the best and most devoted husbands and fathers 



MISSION AH Y PREACHING, 197 

are commonly the best neiglibors and the most pub- 
lic-spirited citizens. 

The Chm-ch of Christ is to be aggressive in the 
world. Her activities, find scope in missionary labor 
at home and abroad. But a Christian community will 
not perform its functions in this respect without in- 
struction, motive, and direction. It is no mean part 
of a Church's life to learn and do God's will in this 
department, and the minister can usually find few 
topics more fitted to instruct and animate his charge 
than missionary work furnishes. Let the day on 
which foreign missions receive the people's gifts be 
marked by a vigorous presentation of the condition 
of heathenism, its unconscious fulfillment of prophecy, 
its illustration of Scripture truth, its utter helpless- 
ness without the Gospel, and its exhibition of what 
we would be in the like condition. When home 
missions have their day, let the moral and spiritual 
condition of the country pass under review. Let 
there be turned on it the light of God's word ; let its 
dark places be exhibited ; let our national weaknesses 
and sins be remorselessly laid bare; let the actual con- 
dition of the Churches and the masses be faithfully 
portrayed ; let the obligations of the Christian people 



198 BEMEMBEB THE POOR. 

be enforced ; let the truths which formed the founda- 
tion of the Christian Church, and again of this Re- 
public, be emphasized, and a genuine public spirit 
will be fostered, such as makes men Christian patri- 
ots. The novelty and the first flush of missionary 
excitement have passed ; .the mere romance of the en- 
terprise is gone. The work is now to rely for prose- 
cution on calm, intelligent, reflecting Christian prin- 
ciple. Knowledge has to supply motive. A race 
has grown up that knows not Brainerd, and Judson, 
and Carey, and Board man, and Goodell, and Mofiat. 
The abundance of general literature crowds out the 
missionary. People will not long give sympathy, 
prayer, and money to that of which they have no 
knowledge; and in our time a Church that has not 
missionary zeal, is like a body paralyzed on one side. It 
is incapable of taking exercise, and the debility increases. 
The poor among us, again, constitute a means of 
developing a true Church-life. Our Protestant system, 
by its very success in fostering a manly, vigorous, 
self-reliant spirit, has thrown us out of sympathy, in 
some degree, with patient, zealous, enlightened effort 
for the poor. When there is an unusual pressure on 
the indigent we make a generous contribution. When 



*' COMPEL THEM TO COME IJSf."^ 199 

we have done that, we are apt to think we have 
done all. But it is not so. Surely there is a via 
media somewhere between the medraevalism which 
divided society into the two distinct and well- 
marked classes — the givers, who meant well, and< 
the receivers, who fared ill by sinking into needy and 
greedy dependence — the " religious," who dispensed, 
and the ignorant and degraded who lived on, alms — 
between this and the Protestant method, which remits 
the whole question of the general poor to- the civil 
authorities.- Surely the Church may yet fall on the 
plan of those earlier self-denying laborers whose 
virtues and successes gave prestige to the monastic 
system, who taught and elevated while they helped 
materially, who lifted up mind and soul while feed- 
ing and clothing the body. To instruct the large 
class not inside our Churches, to bind them by the 
gentle bonds of love to the Church's institutions, to 
educate them out of jealousy and suspicion of the 
rich, and into self-helpfulness, forethought, and all 
prudent thrift and self-respect, is surely a work 
worthy of the American Church in the nine- 
teenth century. There is no want of benevolence 
in the American people. But it is benevolence 



200 LOVE, NOT LAW. 

that is unintelligent, that is credulous, that is impul- 
sive, and, m^oreover, that will not take trouble. 
If ever the problem of pauperism is to be solved, 
Christian love must take it* in hand. Law can 
only, like the surgeon's knife, cut off what is hope- 
lessly gone, or mortifying. Force can only restrain ; 
it has no refcy^niing capacity. Police can only stand 
between our houses and lives and the human beasts 
of prey, that grow up in our social wilderness ; it 
cannot tame them. Christian love, catching its 
inspiration from the cross and drawing its power 
from Him who hung upon it, alone can appreciate 
the situation, catch the eye, win the confidence, and 
gain the heart of the criminal and reckless, who are 
constantly passing out of the ranks of neglected 
pauperism. Given, a Church that has lost positive 
faith, that is letting the doctrines go one by one, to 
which God is mere infinite good nature, the Cross 
a mere legend and the Holy Ghost a figure of speech, 
and I know no better restorative than to have it 
brought in good earnest to deal with souls dead 
and utterly perishing in their own corruption. 
The " fall " will become real, depravity real, need of 
regeneration real, the blood of Jesus real, the wages 



HEALTH BY EXERCISE. 201 

of sin real, tlie gift of God real, as the abortive effort 
is made by kindly platitudes to call out spiritual life. 
Human wickedness mocks all superficial dealing 
with symptoms, and compels us to come back to the 
radical truth of revelation, " If any man be in Christ, 
he is a new creature," and in no other way — '' old 
things are passed away ; behold all things are become 
new." ^ A lazy, indolent church tends toward 
unbelief. An earnest, busy church, in hand-to-hand 
conflict with sin and misery, grows stronger in faith. 
One thing more only, gentlemen, shall I add : In 
your ministry, and in all systematic church-work, 
try to magnify the family. "We have dwelt on indi- 
vidual responsibility, power, and capacity, until the 
individual has appeared to be the exclusive unit of 
society.t The Lord makes much of the family, binds 
together parent and child, and so generation and 

^ 2 Cor. V. 17. 

•I- A truth, neglected avenges itself by leaving space for an 
opposite error. A half triitli told perpetually has a corre- 
sponding Nemesis in its train. We have cried up the indi- 
vidual. But, behold ! here is a good half of the individuals of 
the race to whom we deny equal rights and privileges. Hence 
the crying and screaming one hears from the aggrieved claim- 
ants. But a cry or a scream out of a crowd is evidence, as 
9* 



202 HOME. SWEET HOME. 

generation. His oflEer of mercy runs thus, " Believe* 
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, 
and thy house." Work on this principle with your 
charges. A strong Gharch is made up of well- 
ordered families, where intelligent, Christian parents 
bring up their children in the fear of the Lord, where 
the home of the week has its counterpart in the home 
of the Sabbath, where the hopes and joys of the 
living, and the blessed memories of the dead, bind to 
the Lord and his Church, where young men and 
maidens are glad when it is said unto them, " Let us 
go up unto the house of the Lord," where the tran- 
quillity, and purity, and holy peace, the light and4he 
love, form to the opening minds of children a type and 
prophecy of the eternal Sabbath, and the heaven above. 

has often been said, that some one is being hurt in the pressure. 
The candid and just course is, not to cry it down, but to look 
and inquire, and relieve the pressure where it hurts. Instead of 
pooh-poohing " women's rights," will it not be wiser and better 
to return to the divine method of honoring the family, guard- 
ing its rights, defining its relations, and the duties due to it. If 
it be said many women are unmarried, the reply is that marriage 
is not necessary to a family. There are in the United States 
many well-ordered and happy families of the unmarried — homes 
like that of Bethany, with Lazarus, and Martha, and Mary, his sis- 
ters, in which there does not seem to have been any married person. 



LECTURE IX. 



THE PEEACHINa REQUIRED BY THE TIMES. 

It may be readily admitted that the truth had 
to be presented in one form in the apostolic times, 
in another in the" days of the Reformation, and in 
yet another in our own era. Heathenism and 
corrupt Judaism had to be dealt with by the 
apostles, corrupt Christianity by the reformers, un- 
belief and various forms of worldliness by us.* But 
in all these cases the truth is. the same, though its 
opponents are different. It was with the weapons 
of Paul, Peter, and John the battle of the Reforma- 
tion was fought and won. It is from this same 
armory we are to equip ourselves for the conflicts 
of our day. The methods of employing the truth 
must needs vary in some degree with the varying 
forms of ungodliness; but "the truth" is a fixed 
quantity. Its nature and the history of human 
tliought all go to show what might be presumed 



204 CHANGES SUPERFICIAL 

from its origin — that it is capable of adaptation to 
all the emergencies of human thought and life. 

But, in actual fact, '' times " are less variable for 
the purposes of a preacher than is commonly sup- 
posed. Steamships and railway-cars differ materi- 
ally from the conveyances they have superseded, 
but their passengers have, as men and women, 
undergone no corresponding change. Human nature, 
in its esscDtial elements, has been the subject of 
no substantial alteration. The carnal mind is still 
enmity against God. Man is still so ignorant that 
he needs a great Prophet ; so guilty that he needs 
atonement; so rebellious that he needs to be con- 
quered for the Lord; so helpless that he needs to 
be defended; so wayward that he needs to be 
" established " and kept by the mighty power of 
God. 

ITor does the enemy of our souls discover or invent 
a great deal. Satan is a finite being. He has not 
materially modified or improved his devices since the 
beginning. The Babylon of the Apocalypse retains 
all the essential lineaments of the ancient Babylon."^ 

* See the Two Babylons, or Nimrod and the Papacy y by the 
Rev. A. Hislop, a most ingenious and interesting work. 



SATAN INVENTS LITTLE. 205 

Worldliness iii our time is, in substance, the same as 
before the Flood. There was complete absorption 
in the material interests and social affairs of the 
present life, to the exclusion of God and the future. 
" They did eat, they drank, they married wives, 
they were given in marriage ; " " they bo ght, they 
sold, they planted, they builded " in Sodom much as 
they dp in our cities and towns.^ If you study the 
history of our first parents' temptation you will see 
how few improvements the tempter has • effected 
in all these thousands of years. He is still standing 
by the tre6 of knowledge; still telling women and 
men that they shall be as gods, knowing good and 
evil; still insinuating doubts concerning divine 
attributes; still saying: " Tou may be guided by 
me, and disregard God, and ye shall not die." 
Study the temptation of our blessed Lord, and you 
will see that the policy tried in vain on him is still 
the diabolical policy applied to man. To sow the 
seeds of distrust of God, and confidence in self; to 



* Luke xvii. 27, 28. The danger to very many men, now as 
then, is in things lawful in themselves. They engross and pre- 
occupy, and men know not till the end conies, and they are 
carried away. 



206 self-love magnifies. 

point out easy roads to elevation on Satan's plan ; or 
to lead men into self -destroying presumption — this 
is, even now as then, the aim of Satan in all the 
agencies he establishes and in all the movements 
he inspires. 

The tendency with each generation is to think 
its own time the strangest and most peculiar the 
world ever saw. How many patients in the hos- 
pitals imagine their cases unique and unprecedented ! 
How many persons suppose their lives without 
parallel in human experience! "When I have been 
speaking in various cities and towns in the interests 
of temperance, I have been told in at least fifty 
cases : " This is the very worst town for intemper- 
ance in the whole country." My informants simply 
knew it better than they did any other. So we, 
because we know our own times better than others, 
are apt to think them unlike any others. There is, 
perhaps, even a spice of self-love in this delusion. 
Like criminals, or like the poor sufferers under the 
surgeon's knife, we are flattered by the idea that our 
circumstances are not ordinary and commonplace. 
But, as to all the great facts of human life and the 
underlying principles of human conduct, " the thing 



STUD Y BOTH SIDES, 207 

that hath been is that which shall be, and that which 
is done is that which shall be done ; and there is no 
new thing nnder the sun." "^ This statement, if it 
be just, tends to show that if we know thoroughly, 
and tell clearly the truth, it will suit our times, and 
all times, as truly as the unchanged sunlight suits all 
human eyes and the pure atmosphere all healthy 
lungs from the beginning. 

Yet these considerations do not preclude our 
studying the features of our times and the best 
methods of offering and urging the blessings of 
the covenant of grace. But it is noticeable that in 
many studies on this subject the bad elements of 
our era only, or mainly, are presented, and the 
preacher is placed in antagonism to all the great 
forces at work in society. This is very discouraging, 
but is it necessary ? Are there not good tendencies 
as well as bad of which the preacher may take note ? 
Is not the Lord Jesus, from his " glorious high 
throne," subsidizing many human movements and 
yoking them to the chariot of the everlasting 
Gospel? It would be ungrateful in spirit and it 

^ Eccl. i. 9. 



208 TEE GOLDEN AGE COMING, 

would be unwise in policy to ignore these. There- 
fore I propose to indicate to you some of the tenden- 
cies of our time — ^good no less than evil — to which 
we should have an intelligent regard in making our 
selection of topics, and in determining the tone and 
treatment they demand. 

There are evils so salient that we must take 
account of them, and yet without supposing that our 
cotemporaries are sinners beyond all that went 
before them. Intelligence is now collected from all 
quarters. It is rendered picturesque and striking. 
The crimes and casualties of the world are served up 
with our breakfasts. We may suppose the world get- 
ting worse when it is only getting better known. So 
we may be tempted, like the paganism of Greece and 
Home, to put the Golden Age in the -past, while 
Christianity places it in the future. Paganism had 
the traditions and broken memories of Eden. It 
had not the prophecy of the reign of righteousness. 
It had the knowledge of its own corruptions, and 
it had no vision of the kingdom of grace and 
holiness. 

1. Among the noticeable evils of our day is the 
overestimate of riches as a means of happiness and 



SUDDENLY RICH. 209 

proof of success in life. In the Old Testament, 
where, in the absence of completed written revela- 
tion, Divine Providence expressed divine regard in 
material prosperity, " wealth and riches '' are mag- 
nified,"^ not, indeed, without many a pungent word as 
to their insufficiency, transiency, and deceptiveness.f 
We retain much of the Old Testament view of them, 
and of a very little religion in a rich man we are apt 
to think it " a great deal for him." The conquests 
over nature have been, signal and many. The earth 
has yielded up her stores to trained laborers. Gold 
has come in rich abundancy in our time, and men 
are dazzled by its brilliancy. Commerce has been 
eager, enterprising, and successful. Money has been 
acquired with unwonted rapidity by numbers, and 
the publicity given to all such ^^ successes" in our 
life magnifies their number and greatness, and stimu- 
lates the ambitious. This fact determines the duty 
of the preacher. What was made incumbent on 
Timothy we are not to evade. " Charge them that 
are rich in this world that they be not high-minded, 
nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, 

* 2 Chron. i. 12 ; Ps. cxii. 3. 

t Job ^^i- 13 ; P^ov- ^iii- 11» 2^ ; Ps. xlix. 6. 



210 FRIENDS B Y MAMMON, 

who givetli us all things richly to enjoy." ^ Perhaps 
because we have not titles, distinctions, and heredi- 
tary honors, and are to so great a degree a com- 
mercial community, there is a tendency among us to 
pay court to wealth, from which even the Church is 
not exempt, which is at once inconsistent with our 
republican and with Christian simplicity. There is a 
vulgar, jealous envy of the rich which makes men 
ready to believe the worst things of them — a base 
passion on which communism and all kindred " isms " 
live, with which the Bible has no sympathy; but, on 
the contrary, it urges — and so must we — that the 
rich make to themselves friends of the Mammon of 
unrighteousness, that when they fail they may 
receive them into everlasting habitations.f The 

* 1 Tim. vi. 17-19. 

\ Luke xvi. 9. In natural recoil from ''indulgences" and 
salvation by money, Protestants have been sby of tMs text. 
Why should they be ? Our Lord, naturally taking the language 
from the foregoing parable, counsels men to employ what in 
the steward's hand was unrighteous Mammon in doing good to 
those who need it (assumed to be God's children), that when it 
failed them (apparently the true reading) by its departure, or 
by theirs, these friends should welcome them into everlasting 
habitations. This is very different indeed from a salvation by 
" money and price." 



USUS OF MONET. 211 

whole subject of Christian obligations regarding 
money, of systematic consecration, of maintenance of 
God's ordinances, receives less attention now than in 
apostolic times, partly because ministers shrink from 
seeming to plead their own cause. Few of them 
have preached as much as the Apostle Paul alone 
wrote on this eminently practical topic. ITor is it 
only on the positive side that we are to teach 
believers how to use their gifts. There are real 
perils to all — to the young especially — in the eager 
race for riches, of which the pulpit ought to give 
unmistakable warning. For every man who goes to 
moral ruin through narrow means there are two who 
stumble over fortunes and go to destruction, or who, 
in the mad pursuit of them, " fall into temptation 
and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful 
lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdi- 
tion." 

2. The extravagant and selfish use of money is a 
trouble of our times. It is not merely that men lay 
out much money; if the objects.be legitimate they 
have a right to expend their own. The sin and con- 
temptible folly lie in laying it out for the purpose of 
being able to proclaim the lavish expenditure. The 



212 ABUSES OF MONEY 

luxury of heathen Rome in her decay is being repro- 
duced. When Apicius offered wine with pearls dis- 
solved in it ; when LoUia Paulina's second-best dress 
cost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars ; and 
when Roman society applauded and envied, the rot- 
tenness had already superseded the brave simplicity 
of early and ever-victorious Rome. The iron was 
becoming mixed with the clay. Our danger looms 
up in this direction. Vulgar, ostentatious, objectless 
expenditure does not strike us as it ought. We begin 
to " live delicately " like Tj^re and ancient Babylon ; 
we ought to be afraid of inglorious decadence like 
theirs. 

If there is to be any effective protest against all this 
the Church should surely raise it. If any light is cast 
on it in the Scriptures, the pulpit ought to reflect it. 
Christian women ought to set an example of modesty, 
self-restraint, and womanly dignity, to the community. 
So long as distinction comes by dress and decoration, 
and the joys of life consist, in any marked degree, in 
the display of fashionable costume and costly jewelry, 
so long will the temptation be irresistible to the 
weaker part of the sex to procure these essentials at 
any cost, even the sacrifice of all that true woman 



A JUST BALANCE, 213 

cherishes. " She that liveth in pleasure is dead while 
she liveth ""^ is plain and practical truth which the 
pulpit should re-echo. Where is the use of setting up 
Magdalen Asylums on the one hand, and on the other, 
opening up the slippery paths on which he feet of 
" careless daughters " stumble, so that they become 
qualified by sin and misery to be the objects of such 
" charity ? " Why should panics, losses, and mortifying 
collapses be necessary to recall man to the truth 
of things, the uses of money, and the objects of life? 
There is no want of clear speaking on these subjects 
in the Word. It is bold, courageous, searching. It 
strips off conyentional disguises, exposes all sophis- 
try of selfishness, and magnifies manly, womanly 
superiority to childish display and ostentatious trap- 
pings. It makes no more of royal purple, and 
glittering gems on the godless, than we do of the 
feathers and war-paint of the savage. As the Re- 
deemer was not "carried away, like His disciples, 
with admiration of the goodly stones with which Je- 
rusalem's temple was built, for His eyes had seen the 
heavenly Zion, so the soul that has been taught the 

* 1 Tim. V. 6. 



214 WISE MEN AND MAGICIANS, 

value of unsearchable riches, and the glorj of the 
inheritance of the saints, rates at their true worth the 
transient dignities that money or position confers. 
To form the judgment and correct human estimates 
is no mean part of the work of the ministry. Present 
possessions are to be seen and rated in the light of the 
enduring and eternal. 

3. Our time overestimates the value of physical 
^studies. They do, undoubtedly, interest, fascinate, 
and in some degree, refine. Nor is their attraction 
wholly sentimental. They enrich and multiply power. 
Applied chemistry, electricity, and mineralogy ren- 
der substantial service to mankind, while they open 
up the way to wealth to the possessors of the power 
of knowledge. Men who disclose the secrets of 
nature, like the wise men and magicians of the 
Orient, secure the favor of princes and the confidence 
and veneration of the masses. Hence, like the wise 
men of old, they become recognized as authorities on 
all subjects. Yet it does not follow that a man 
whose natural powers and close observation have made 
him an authority on rocks, minerals, or magnetism, 
should be, therefore, an oracle in morals or religion. 
A microscope does not magnify an obscure point in 



APPROPRIATE EVIDENCE. 215 

law or casuistry. A telescope does not bring spirit- 
ual forces any nearer^ or disclose Him who is invisible. 
Yet is this forgotten, and an eminent specialist in 
natural history will be presumed by many infallible in 
philosophy or religion. 

The pulpit has a duty here, not to frown on 
or discourage physical science, which has a distinct 
and most honorable sphere, but to show its place, and 
to constrain the attention of the physicist himself, if 
he will hear, to the great concurrent facts of the moral 
and spiritual world. It is not science that does harm ; 
but its exclusive study. The mind molded by the 
methods of this study grows insolent and arrogant, 
suspects and rejects the facts that cannot be verified 
under the dissecter's knife ar in the crucible. Kor is 
it true and thorough science, as a rule, that is skepti- 
cal, but half-educated and short-sighted technical 
knowledge, which only takes cognizance of what 
it has scrutinized — like the blind man who felt the leg 
of an elephant and pronounced the animal to be an 
upright pillar, while his blind companion, who got 
hold of the trunk, pronounced him soft and flexible 
like a serpent. 

The teaching of divine truth, not controversially. 



216 PHILOSOPHERS PUZZLED. 

but clearly and positively, is the check on their 
excesses. Natural philosophers study God as Creator. 
Christian ministers have to exhibit Him also as 
Father. The natural philosopher has one record, the 
Christian minister has two. The natural philosopher 
is apt to make law inviolable ; to sell the universe to 
law. The Christian minister sees God in the laws, 
and counts them but his thoughts. A boy has a 
repeater given him, but does not know it from 
an ordinary watch. He hears its tickings and watches 
its hands. He knows the laws of its nature, he sup- 
poses. But when he is shown its repeating power 
and hears it strike, he is amazed, startled. But he 
soon sees that its repeating power is as much the law 
of the watch as its time-keeping power, and was as 
truly provided for in its structure. ISTatural philoso- 
phy, at the present moment, is sorely puzzled by 
prayer. It is an impenetrable mystery to it. It 
reasons against it as the sophist did against walking. 
What shall we do ? As the philosopher did, in reply, 
who walked, so " let us pray." However otherwise 
mistaken, he had a good, true thought, who said : — • 

" Brothers ! spare reasoning ; men liave settled long 
That ye are out of date, and they are wise ; 



JUST A UTHOBITY. 217 

Use their own weapons ; let your words be strong. 

Tour cry be loud, till each scared boaster flies ; 
Thus the Apostles tamed the pagan breast. 
They argued not, but preached ; and conscience did fche rest." * 

We should hardly think of making an overesti- 
mate of the fine arts a special mark of om- time. It 
is the common snare of all wealthy and Inxurious 
communities to overrate the imitative products of 
men. How high art-culture may be, and how low 
the moral and spiritual life of its votaries may be, 
one may see in the Medicis, in Leo X., and his time, 
in the Augustan age of Rome, and of France. Cor- 
rupt religious systems easily accommodate themselves 
to such tastes, and embody their results in worship ; 
but there is no evidence of resulting spiritual gain. 
The tribute to art has commonly been paid at the 
expense of religion. 

Nor do we specify, though we do not ignore, the 
tendency to idolize genius. To how many has 
Charles Dickens been a propliet ? But men are not 
necessarily authorities in all fields because the)^ are 
effective painters or word-painters. As absurd as 

* Verses on Various Occasions, by John H. Newman. 
(This was written in 1833.) 



218 BETTER SIGNS. 

to make a pedestrian, whose feats of so many miles 
in so many hours have amazed or amused, an author- 
ity on Christian walk and conversation, or to rely on 
a man for astronomical wisdom because he was tall 
and had good eye-sight, or on Turner as a botanist 
because he painted stone-pines, or as a ship-builder 
because he succeeded on ships — ^as absurd is it to 
clothe a man with authority in every department of 
human thought because he is eminent in one. The 
truth with which we have to do has its own plane, 
its own appropriate evidences, its own tests, its own 
authorities, and the wayfaring man, though a fool, 
is as open to the spirit's guidance in it as is the most 
penetrating genius. " Let God be true, and every 
man a liar." 

Turn now to the cheerful aspects of our times, and 
in view of which Christian . preachers ought to be 
strong and of a good courage. 

1. We hail as a good sign the independence of 
thought of our time. Human authority does not go 
unchallenged. The mere name of Aristotle or of Plato 
does not silence an objector. The old kings of mind, 
who ruled so long and so despotically, " have gone 
out of business." Men do not bow their heads at the 



NOTHING TO FEAR. 219 

name of the Fathers. Councils are regarded as gath- 
erings of so many fallible men, and no nearer infal- 
libility from their meeting than a thousand ciphers 
without a whole number are nearer to value from 
the addition of another thousand. "" The Church " 
does not, by the mere mention of the name, forbid 
inquiry. The State is limited in its functions. Time 
was, and yet is, where to decline its clergy must be 
constructive disloyalty to its king. Men feel their 
right to discuss, examine, and investigate. They are 
like children new-fangled with the pretty things 
physical science has brought them ; but the childhood 
will pass away. If some are in the state of mind 
described by Lord Bacon,^ " a little philosophy in- 
clineth a man's mind to atheism," others are at the 
further and happier stage, " but depth in philosophy 
bringeth men's minds about to religion." 

The Christian minister need not* fear this inde- 
pendence. Let us rejoice in it. We stand on a 
revelation that says, '' Prove all things, hold fast that 
which is good."f It is a good time in which to live. 
These gales will do no permanent harm. If branches 

* Bacon's Essays, xvi., on Atlieism. f 1 Tliess. v. 1. 



1 



220 INFIDELITY OVEBnATED, 

and trunks come down, it is mostly the rotten, and 
the growing and healthy trees grow better and take 
root the deeper for the blasts. Any thought is bet- 
ter than none ; a breeze with even wild waves is 
healthier than a stagnant, dead sea. "W"e have, I do 
believe, greatly overrated the relative power of infi- 
delity in our time. When Bishop Butler issued his 
Analogy he stated in the preface that it had come to 
be taken for granted that the Christian religion was 
not worth arguing about, and men were hastening to 
take revenge for the restraints it had imposed on 
them. Where is there any infidelity now with the 
genius, the boldness, the conscious power, the popu- 
lar acceptance it enjoyed in the days of Rousseau 
Yoltaire, and Diderot? There is more living reli- 
gion in the Episcopal Church, or in any one of two 
or three English denoiAinatious now, than in all 
Great Britain in the beginning of this century. 
There never was as strong and intelligent a Chris- 
tian sentiment in the world as there is at this mo- 
ment, never so rich a Christian literature, never were 
so many living believers. There is more Christian 
knowledge in Europe than at any time for the last 
thousand years, and America and Australia represent 



CHBI8TIANS ASSURED. 221 

a new world of life and vigor. jSTor is the heart of 
Christendom less hopeful than it ever was. " The 
ages of faith " of which many rhapsodize, were ages 
of much superstition, of crusades, of Flagellantes, of 
intolerance, of schoolmen, of Guelphs and Ghibellines, 
of much baptized heathenism. The Church of Jesus 
Christ fears nothing from real free thought. • Her 
members are its truest friends and wisest patrons. 
She does not tremble before Greek as bringing in all 
heresies. Her travelers explore the lands of the 
Bible, dig into the ruins of empires, exhume the 
bones of ancient kings, and feel assured that the 
alleged home of the Bible will not disown it. His- 
tory is not dreaded ; criticism of the destructive kind,- 
as it was called, has had its day. The friends of the 
Bible do not " peep and mutter,'^ but stand on the 
housetops and call for evidence from every quarter. 
Ancient MSS. are worth their weight in gold to 
Christians ; mummies from Nineveh, and bricks 
from Babylon — all are in demand; and Christian 
scholarship counts on their corroboration of the 
Christian faith. It is a grand time in which to live 
and labor as ministers. Our preaching should re- 
spond to every cry for light and life. We proclaim 



222 MORE HUMAJSriTY. 

liberty to the captives. We have no wish to com- 
mand the winds of free thought back to their cave. 
Christianity emancipates mind, and brings it into 
discipleship to Him whose service is freedom. It 
welcomes all restlessness under human yokes, and 
says to every human spirit that is tugging at its 
chains, " If the Son shall make you free ye shall be 
free indeed."^ 

2. There is more humanity in this age than ever 
before. Ethnology does no harm. All men are of 
one blood, it declares, in concert with the Scrip- 
tures.f War is deprecated as a cruel necessity, not 
gloried in as the proper work of man. It needs to 
be justified to the conscience of mankind. It never 
was attended by so many means of mitigating its 
horrors. How many chains our eyes have seen 
broken ! Labor was never so much lightened. The 
miner is free and the factory child gets to school. 
Reformatories, asylums, prison-discipline, have super- 
seded the hulks and Botany Bay. 

This is to be noted by the preacher. Humanity, 
born of the Scripture, is to be brought up at its 

" * Jolm viii. 36. f Acts xvii. 26. 



REVIVED GHUBGH-LIFE. 223 

parent's knee, guided and directed. The clergy need 
not toil on every specific plan of bo^evolence, but 
they supply the fuel, and feed the flame of Christian 
compassion. They are commonly the wisest, best, 
and most disinterested friends of every beneficent 
agency, and they are so to bring Bible principles to 
bear, that weak sentimentalism or mechanical rou- 
tine shall not supersede the true reforming agency, 
in the manifested love of God in Jesus Christ. 

8. The Church is coming back to what she was be- 
fore the age of Constantine, when civil power took 
her work too much in hand, — to what, in her purest 
portions, she was in the eighth, ninth, and tenth cen- 
turies. For it is historically true that as she was 
evangelical she was missionary ; as she ceased to be 
evangelical she ceased to be evangelistic. The Ref- 
ormation revived this zeal in both the Reformed and 
Roman Catholic communions ; for no one who has 
not read and refiected estimates aright the extent to 
which the Reformation revived even the Church of 
Rome. 

We must guide and maintain this missionary spirit 
by exhibiting the genius of Scripture, the uses of the 
Church, the lights of prophecy shining over so many 



224 STANDING TOGETHEB, 

dark places, the noble examples of saints, the true 
motives and mjeans, the authoritative instructions of 
the Master, and the magnificence of the coming fu- 
ture. It is of little use to tell men to be good. The 
Gospel only shows us how enmity is exchanged for 
reconciliation, and how power to do good is given for 
the previous bondage to sin. 

4. The yearning for Christian union is a favorable 
feature of our time. There are various ways of 
satisfying it^ — wise and foolish. The " Solemn League 
and Covenant " contemplated one method, of which 
the counterpart was tried on this continent. The 
English Government tried another way in making all 
civil ofiicers communicants. It is a mark of the prog- 
ress of opinion that we now see the folly and the 
mischief of such a plan. This spirit of union is to be 
directed from the pulpit. Denominationalism has its 
use ; but we are to guard against its abuse. I have 
no notion of being cut off from that historic Christian 
Church, which was before the Papacy, and may be 
traced during the night of pre-Reformation times by 
the fires of persecution ; nor from the Waldenses of 
ISTorthern Italy ; nor the Albigenses of Southern 
France ; nor from Latimer, Ussher, Barrow, Butler, and 



THE ONE FAMILY. 225 

Leighton ; nor from the Puritans of England in the 
national Church or out of it ; nor from their descend- 
ants ; nor from the Scottish believers — rugged like 
their native mountains, but firm like them ; nor from 
Wesley and Whitfield ; nor from Carey, and Andrew 
Fuller, and Robert Hall; nor from Oliver Cromwell, 
and Selden, and John Owen ; nor, if you can show me 
successors in the Communion of Eome to Blaise Pas- 
cal, and Fenelon, and Thomas a Kempis, from them. 
They are of the family of which God is the Father, 
Jesus the elder Brother, and in which I claim mem- 
bership. And I should count it indescribably base to 
glorify these mighty dead, now at the safe distance 
of heaven from me, and to ignore their representatives 
in the next parish, or look with jealousy or coldness 
on their successful labors. 

The pulpit is to foster the spirit of union, which 
does not necessarily imply organic union, the effort 
after which may be only human pride striving for a 
great corporation, but which seeks co-operation, dis- 
tribution of resources at home, and of laborers in 
foreign mission fields. Scripture direction, reproof, 
and prediction are to be brought to bear on this, until, 
as the Epistles to Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, 



226 ''GUI BONO f'' 

Ephesians, and Philippians lie side by side in the 
blessed volume, all marked by individual features, yet 
all speaking the same language, breathing the same 
spirit, doing the same work, magnifying the same 
Lord, so the Churches of Jesus Christ shall be perfect- 
ly joined together, animated by one spirit, wasting no 
power on one another, but " steadfast and unmovable, 
always abounding in the work of the Lord." The 
Lord speed this most blessed era ! 

5. We should notice the practical character of our 
times. Mere theories and abstractions go for little. 
The idea that a minister's success lay in the number 
of persons whom he induced to take up his way, or 
hire his pews, is not now supreme. 

Like the children in the lyric, as they saw the 
skulls turned up on Blenheim battle-field, and asked 
the details of the battle from the old man, who still 
put in the inquiry — 

" But what good came of it, at last ? " 

SO men most properly ask now, and will no more be 
satisfied than the children with the assurance that 

" It was a famous victory," 

Congregations must justify their existence. If they 



CHBI82IAN8 AT WORK. 22Y 

only bring people together to be " very much pleased*," 
why, the Lecture Bureaus will contract for all that. 
" Did you worship ? "Were you edified ? Did the 
Lord speak to you ? Did you speak to Him ? Do 
you mean more seriously to be pure, honest, upright, 
generous, manly, holy, from what you did and heard 
to-day ? " These are the questions which the best part 
of mankind feel to be proper, and to which we must 
have affirmative replies. All this is good for us, and 
should not be forgotten. The Bible is the most sensi- 
ble book in the world. It has no dash of romance, 
no mixture of fanaticism, no flavor of a mutual admi- 
ration company. Its saints do not convene to purr 
over one another, but to instruct, help, and edify one 
another, and to influence the world. '' By their fruits 
ye shall know them" is its axiom. " What fruit had 
ye in those things, of which ye are now ashamed ? " 
is its fearless challenge to sinners. We, who preach, 
are to aim at visible saintship i3 ourselves and in our 
people, that this practical age may see that it is not a 
vain thing to serve the Lord. 

6. It is, perhaps, a part of this practical, element 
that we have so much so-called " Christian activity." 
The varied forms of it need n(it be specified. The 



228 FIRST SELF, THEN SEBVIGE. 

best impulses thereto, and the surest guidance there- 
in, must come from the pulpit. "We must help the 
people to discriminate between the energy of mere 
human flesh, which is fussy, self -asserting, self-con- 
scious, easily provoked, easily discouraged, and the 
power of the spirit, which is quiet, gentle, meek, and, 
in a sense, indomitable. 

We must put all service in its right place, not as a 
means toward acceptance, but as a blessed and cheer- 
ful fruit of it. " The Lord had respect to Abel and 
to his offering " — Abel first, then the offering. We 
must keep the eye of all Christian labor clear, single, 
looking right on."^ '' This I do, O Christ, for thee," 
we must keep up as its motto. If this principle cuts 
off some bazars, exhibitions, tableaux, and other fan- 
tastic ways of getting our naoney's w^orth of enjoy- 
ment, and crediting it to Christ, I do not think the 
Church will be much weaker. 

We must keep up tRe standard of Christian living 
in the Christian laborer. Clean hands are needed to 
do Christian work. Character is before co-operation, 
being before doing. "Take heed unto thyself, and 
to the doctrine." f 

* Prov. iv. 25. 1 1 Tim. iv. 16. 



FAITHFUL IN ALL. 229 

Thus from the evil that we admit and deplore, but 
no less from the good for which we are glad and 
thankful, must we draw motives to zeal and fidelitv, 
and receive aids to fitness as able ministers of the 
New Testament. 



LECTURE X. 



The idea is not to be conveyed by what is said of 
power to-day, that the pulpit has lost its force and 
usefulness. That impression is sometimes -given out 
by literary men in the serials and magazines. Liter- 
ary men, unhappily, as a rule, are not, and have not 
been, docile pupils of the pulpit. They have been 
apt to think of themselves as instructors of mankind ; 
the editorial "we" beguiles them. They are not 
disposed, by their very professional life, to listen to 
men whose reliance is not on rhetoric, or the tricks 
of literary composition, but on truth unfamiliar to 
them, and on language simple and unadorned. There 
have been many noble exceptions, in men of high 
literary power and repute, with range of view wide 
enough to include the spiritual world, and with re- 
ligious life, sufficiently vigorous to crave and feed 
upon revealed truth. I speak of literary men as a 
class. They may be easily mistaken in their es- 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 231 

timate ; just as a corresponding error is indulged 
regarding oratory. You would suppose, to hear some 
men talk, that in the days of Philip of Macedon every 
man spoke like Demosthenes, and that every Roman 
politician expressed himself like Cicero. It is for- 
gotten that it is the pre-eminence of Demosthenes 
over all his compeers that lifts him up to our view, 
that it is because Cicero was head-and-shoulders 
above his cotemporaries that he is an object of ad- 
miration to us. So it is with preachers. " "Where," 
men say, " are the Summerfields and Whitfields ? " 
It is to be borne in mind that they towered above 
their cotemporaries, that they were unapproached, 
and that in Whitfield's case, at least, he declared an 
unfamiliar gospel in a dead age. It would be reply 
enough to ask " Where were the Spurgeons, the Mel- 
villes, the Robertsons, the Guthries, the Binneys, 
the Candlishes, the Paysons, the Kirks, the Alex- 
anders, the Thornwells, of their time ? " Or suppose 
the argument were applied to the press : where 
are the Horace Greeleys, the Raymonds, the Gordon 
Bennetts of the newspaper world ? All gone — the 
press is effete, the newspapers not worth reading ! 
These identical men, or copies of them, are not here. 



232 GIFTS NOT WITHDBA WN, 

There is infinite variety of gift, talent, and faculty ; 
and the press, as a whole, is as able, fresh, and vigor- 
ous as it ever was. The same statement is emphatic- 
ally true of the pulpit. You are not, gentlemen, 
going to a sinking profession. You fall into no f or- 
f orn hope. You sacrifice yourselves to no lost cause. 
There never was more of energy, talent, zeal, culture, 
and ability consecrated to Christ in the pulpit than 
now, and you may catch a certain inspiration from 
the association w^ith a noble, numerous, and devoted 
band of fellow-laborers, inferior to no race of minis- 
ters since the days of the apostles. I think there 
was as much piety, learning, and ability in the Coun- 
cil at New Haven as in the Council of Laodicea ; and 
the Evangelical Alliance Conference at ITew York, 
in 1873, would bear favorable comparison, for all that 
should distinguish the Christian ministry, with the 
Council of Mce. 1 would rather stand over Dean 
Alford than over Tertullian, Jonathan Edwards than 
Athenagoras, "Charles Hodge than Jerome, and I 
prefer Moses Stuart of Andover to Clement of Alex- 
andria. 

If it be alleged that most sermons do not rise above 
mediocrity, let it be considered how many men at 



UR SO UBCES OF PO WEB. 233 

the bar, in tlie Senate, in tlie State Legislatures, rise 
above mediocrity. Make out a list of the noted 
orators of secular life in our own oratorical age, and 
it is not formidably lengthened. 

What this final Lecture should be entitled is not 
very clear, but its object is to point out those ele- 
ments of which we are to take note as combining to 
give weight and legitimate authority in pastoral 
work, and particularly in preaching. If some things 
are noticed on which you have not had occasion to 
think, do not on that account dismiss them ; and if 
something be said which is familiar to you, regard it, 
please, as indication of the substantial identity of 
what I have been saying to you with the general in- 
struction you have received here and elsewhere, and of 
the oneness of Christian brethren in conviction and in 
experience, though separated by form or organization. 

1. There is a legitimate influence founded on offi- 
cial standing. Of course, if we had no other right to 
be respectfully heard ; or if we paraded our license 
to preach with puerile and ridiculous vauity ; or if 
we assumed, on the strength of it, airs which even as 
men and as gentlemen, we should not affect ; or if, 
in virtue of being licensed and ordained, we walked 



234 MINISTERS OF CHRIST. 

on stilts, spoke loftily, and otherwise displayed weak- 
ness and vanity, we should have slender claim to 
respectful hearing. It will be easy to instance such 
folly, to caricature it, and to swing round to the con- 
clusion tha-t there is no such thing as official standing. 
But we assume ministers to have the average meas- 
ure of taste, common sense, and modesty (if they 
lack these they should not be ministers) ; to be no 
more elated by their license than a physician by his 
diploma, or an officer by his commission ; and no more 
reliant on the license for success than the doctor on 
his parchment or the officer on his uniform. To such 
a man there is a certain amount of influence derived 
from his official standing. That influence he carries 
to the pulpit. This may be inferred from the fact 
that the first ministers, meek and lowly as they were, 
do not fail to put their commission forward on all 
proper occasions. It is needless to quote the intro- 
ductions to the epistles, many allusions in the body 
of the letters, and many arguments and appeals 
founded on their commission,^ They were mes- 

* See Acts x. 42 ; xx. 24 ; Rom. i. 1 ; xv. 16 ; 1 Cor. i. 1 ; iv. 
1 ; 2 Cor. i. 1 ; iii. 6 ; iv. 1 ; xiii. 10 ; Gal. i. 1 ; PMl. i. 1, etc. ; 
ITim. i. 1, 12; 1 Pet. i. 1 ; v. 1. 



ELSE, WHY OBDAIN? 235 

sengers whose consequence depended on the Sender, 
embassadors whose position was fixed by the King 
they represented, and they were miraculously at- 
tested as sent of God. They never took pains to 
disclaim this official standing, or to denude them- 
selves of any regard it might inspire. In all the suf- 
ferings, hardships, and perils of the time, they never 
shrink from the common lot of Christians. They 
will be as Jews to Jews, as Greeks to Greeks ; they 
will make tents, beg money, minister to saints, do 
anything for their good; but it is as ministers of 
Jesus Christ. ITot only so, but, if you will think of 
it, all self-renunciation, all condescension to men of 
low estate will be enhanced in its value by the dis- 
tinct official position of those who enjoy the honor, 
but have none of the insolence of office. 

And that men so understand it is proved by the 
whole machinery of associations, councils, presbyt- 
eries, or whatever other bodies recognize, set apart, 
or ordain. Why do they exist, if not to give such 
standing ? and why give it, if it is worthless, and 
there is some merit in disclaiming every sign of it? 
In this regard we only carry out the plan of Scrip- 
ture. There were some who had the rule, whoever 



236 FBATEBISTAL FEELING. 

they were, wlio were to be honored and obeyed. 
There were office-bearers, as distinguished from mem- 
bers, clothed with authority, according to Christ's 
laws, to administer the government of His house. 
That authority is not lordly, discretionary, nor legis- 
lative, but ministerial ; that is, in submission to the 
word of the Master. They are not infallible ; nor is 
their right to interpret the Divine Word exclusive. 
But the authority is real notwithstanding, however it 
may be regarded or limited ; there is something in 
the position before the Church to which God calls 
a man through His Spirit, the Church having recog- 
nized that call. 

J^ow, there seems to me no special wisdom in 
aftecting to igiiore all this, and reducing ourselves 
to the ranks. We are ministers of Jesus Christ, and 
we are to be careful that the office suffers no con- 
spicuous dishonor through us. We have brethren in 
the ministry who stand to us in a different relation 
from that of ordinary believers, and it does not ap- 
pear to me out of place here to urge you to the cul- 
tivation of a true brotherly feeling. Ministers ought 
to be able to sympathize with a minister better than 
laymen can do. We are bound to stand by our 



TRAINED Mim), 23T 

order, all the more from this, that the world is ready 
to jndge ministers more severely than any other 
class. We are bound to strengthen each other with 
the people, to discourage querulous reports and gos- 
sip from them regarding their ministers, and to 
render mutual aid in difficulties and perplexities. 
We are to frown on the idea of rivalry, to scorn the 
policy of drawing members from our brethren."^ "We 
are to show, by cordial co-operation with brethren, 
that the cause of Jesus Christ is greater to us than 
individual interests, and to carry one another in 
prayer before the throne of our common Lord. 

2. "We have the power of educated mind. We 
are taught to set things in order, to make them clear, 
to illustrate truth, » to present it persuasively and 
agreeably. We have advantages common to us with 
all educated speakers. These we are not to despise. 
God employs fitting instruments for the doing of 
His work. He said of Aaron : " I know that he can 
speak well." He sent on the Apostles tongues of 
fire. 

* See an admirable paragrapli on tliis subject in Vinet's Pas- 
toral Theology, Fourth Part, cli. iii., on '* Relations of Ecclesias- 
tics among themselves." 



238 SPECIAL PREFAB ATIOJS-. 

ISTow, we have special education. We are trained 
to set forth the truth of God. We have studied the 
best modes of presenting it. We have not only- 
general intelligence on this matter, but, when we 
stand up to preach, that particular sermon is the 
fruit of special study. You will, as you look over 
your audience, see many men who know much of 
which you are ignorant, who perhaps know moral or 
religious truth, as a whole, better than you do ; who 
have wider general information, more varied obser- 
vation, a quicker wit than yours ; but you have gone 
to the store-house of truth, have made sure that you 
have a portion of it to give there and then, which you 
have mastered for that time, and of which, at the 
moment, you have more exact present knowledge 
than any of your hearers. This may give coniSdence 
and a certain sense of power in your speaking. Nor 
must it be forgotten that, as Schleiermacher tried to 
teach his countrymen, religion is not only in the 
region of knowing or in the region of doing, but 
of feeling and affection, assimilating the knowledge 
and stimulating to action. Nothing that has- been 
said in these .lectures is meant or, it is believed, 
fitted to depreciate vigorous mind or high education 



WEIGHT OF GHABACTEK 239 

in the pulpit. The more of both we have in the 
service of Christ in His Church the better. But 
even ordinary average mind, thoroughly trained, can 
go about its proper work in preaching with the same 
kind of confidence with which ordinary average 
mind, professionally trained, does its work in the 
dispensary or the court-room. 

3. We have the power of moral character. " For 
he was a good man, full of the Holy *Grhost and of 
faith ; and much people was added unto the Lord." ^ 
Is this collocation of phrases purely accidental? 
Tou are known to be sincere, disinterested, honest, 
desirous of doing good. Tou have lived and labored 
among the people. Tou remember Paul's appeal to 
the Thessalonians : "For our Gospel came not unto 
you in word only, but in power, and in the Holy 
Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what 
manner of men we were among you for your sake." f 
Let there be habitual emphasis on that element " for 
your sake." There is power from unselfish service — 
from living habitually before men's eyes a blameless, 
beneficent life. The man is felt to be greater than 

* Acts xi. 24. t 1 Thess. i. 5. 



240 PATIENT CONTINUANCE. 

what he says. It is a part of which he is the whole ; 
and his personality is behind his speech. All the 
weight of him is with his words, as the force of a 
blow is measured in a gymnasium by, not that of the 
arm only, but also of the body that is behind the 
arm. So, gentlemen, when you are toiling in a 
community, looking up the lapsed, reclaiming the 
drunkard, persuading the careless to set up a family 
altar and make a true home, drawing children to the 
feet of Jesus, comforting the broken-hearted, helping 
tottering steps back into the ways of virtue and self- 
respect, mingling your tears with those of the miser- 
able, or your gladness with the joys of the happy, 
praying with distracted parents by the cradle of their 
dying child — though you are not adding anything to 
your piles of manuscripts or your stores of book- 
learning, you are adding to the power with which 
the individual sermon goes to the hearts of the 
hearers. 

It will be obvious that the acquisition of this moral 
power depends on the prosecution of ministerial labor 
in a right spirit ; for obvious selfishness, vanity, self- 
seeking, petulance, impatience, and all such levity as 
the judgment of the people counts out of place, will 



BLESSINGS BY THE WAY. 241 

seriously hinder its attainment.^ The poor woman 
who, instead of replying to an impatient speech of 
her pastor, lifted up her hands and eyes and ex- 
claimed, ^^ "Would to God I had never heard your 
voice but in the pulpit ! " administered, all uncon- 
sciously, a rebuke which we must take care not to 
deserve. And if we are sometimes tired with half- 
comprehending, dull, perverse, or narrow good peo- 
ple, or by " unreasonable men," let us remember how 
much was endured by Him who became " a minister 
of the circumcision." Let us also bear in mind how 
often we, like the earliest Christian preachers, have 
been foolish, and slow-hearted in believing. And let 
us set over against the vexations the incidental favors 
which, in addition to the great reward in heaven, a 
naost merciful and generous master throws in by the 
way, as we do the work of the ministry. How much 
confidence is given us ! How much appreciation ! 

* And this wiU be a rule of action to ministers. In many in- 
stances tliey might, without injury to themselves, do or enjoy 
that which would " offend " the people. And in matters of mere 
personal gratification, a true minister will forego W<77i^5, because 
he is bent on duties. He will avoid that which, though to him 
indifferent or iimocent, yet would raise a prejudice against his 
message. 



242 THE WORD IS POWERFUL. 

How often, when we are despising ourselves for mis- 
erable preaching, some true child of God comes and, 
half -ashamed to intrude, says. It has done me so much 

'good ! How many prayers go np for us from aged 
disciples, young converts, and little children ! How 
much more human affection we enjoy than we de- 
serve ! "When a fellow-laborer of mine died, who 
had no cares but his parish, and uot much to recom- 
mend him but his ministerial devotedness, a poor 
waitress, a member in his church, said to me, with 
sobs and tears, " I loved him — next to my own father 
— the best in all the world." It is worth much to 
have the grateful regard of true hearts, however 
towly. 

4. We have the power of the word of God. What 
He makes has perfect fitness for its end. • All the 

.world is adapted to man. Hence we construct our 
argument for the unity (not necessarily the unicity^ 
or numerical oneness, but the unity, which implies 
plurality) of God. He who made the cattle made 
the grass which is fitted to them, as they are to man. 
But the maker of the grass is maker of the seasons on 
which it is dependent. But the seasons depend on 
the earth's movements^ and it on the arrangements 



THE WORD INCARNATE. 243 

of the solar system ; so one plan runs through all, and 
one divine mind arranged and completed the whole 
complicated system. Now, if all the parts of the uni- 
verse be fitted for their uses, it is fair to conclude 
that the same is true of His word which He has so 
much magnified. Let us believe in it as perfectly 
adapted to the objects of our ministry. 

It is easy, indeed, to trace the progress of revela- 
tion, the infiuences that formed the mind of prophets 
and apostles, the chances to which manuscripts and 
versions have been exposed, the variety of ^'readings," 
and the human features which the book, by its very 
nature, wears. One may so pertinaciously dwell on 
all these, that it shall seem to him as not very differ- 
ent from a good human book. Thus men have so 
exclusively dwelt on the human experiences of our 
Saviour's life, His birth and growth. His hunger, 
thirst, weariness, dying, and His expressions of what 
was true of Him as man, that they have ignored His 
divine nature and eternal existence. Now the word 
written is like the Word incarnate — it has a human 
and a divine side, and we must not, in studying its 
lo'wer, lose sight of its higher, nature. It is " quick 
and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword." 



244 THE WORD WRITTEN. 

(Heb iv. 12.) Let ns have confidence in it. Let us 
take " the sword of the Spirit which is the word of 
God." (Eph. vi. 12.) The military officer having 
had his sword ground and sharpened for the cam* 
paign — -a preparation such as your studies here are 
meant to give you — does not wrap it around with 
flowers or ribbons. That were childish. Nor must 
we lessen the pow;er of the word to cut and penetrate^ 
by wrapping it in our poetry, speculation, and philos- 
ophy. Let it — itself — with its two edges reach the 
soul and spirit. It will discern " the thoughts of the 
heart." Men will think some one reported their 
cases to us, as the word lays them bare. They will 
say '-' That was for me ; " for it is powerful to awaken, 
to reveal, to cast down imaginations, to expose refuges 
of lies, to convince of sin, to cheer, to comfort, to 
stimulate, to sanctify. 

Let us preach the law for evangelical purposes, that 
men, judged and condemned of their own consciences 
and coming to God in Christ, may escape being con- 
demned of Him, Let us so preach the Gospel that 
we shall magnify the law, and establish it. Divine 
mercy is not a. grave in which Justice is buried out 
of sight; iior is Jesus a inilder divinity who propi- 



BELIEVE AND OBEY. 245 

tiates a stern avenger. God so loved the world that 
He gave Jesus Christ — "that whosoever believeth 
in Him should not perish but have eternal life." 
"Yea, we establish the law." Christ, in making 
atonement, is the exponent and expression of Eternal 
Love. His cross is, at the same time, the mightiest 
contribution to the majesty of law the world has ever 
seen. In Him God is just, and yet the justifier of 
the believer. 

Let us be evangelical, like Paul, Peter, and John. 
Let us be ethical, like James ; and, if we catch the 
spirit of all, we shall feel and exhibit no real contra- 
diction. We shall see Paul and James, two disciples 
going on their Master's business, when they are 
assailed before and behind. Self -righteousness is 
faced by Paul. " By the deeds of the law shall no 
flesh be justified." " A man is justified by faith 
without the deeds of the law."^ These are his blows 
at the enemy to whom he is opposed. Licentiousness, 
in whatever form it perverts grace into a cover for 
sin, has to be grappled with by James. " O, vain 

* Rom. iii., 20, 28. It was not, surely, a mere accident that 
tliis demonstration should have been made " to all that be in 
Rome." 



246 PAVL AND JAME8. 

man ! faith without works is dead." " By works a 
man is justified, and not by faith only."^ These are 
his blows at his foe. Do not be afraid. He is not 
striking at Paul, nor Paul at him. They are not 
foes, but friends, as Arnot somewhere puts it, " back to 
back.'' Each has his own foe, and each is fighting 
his single combat ; but they are on the same side. 
" The battle is the Lord's." And if we set forth the 
same truths in the same connections we shall, pos- 
sibly, be charged with inconsistency, bat the desired 
result will be reached, and our hearers will be "doers 
of the word and not hearers only." 

Have we not seen how often men of rude speech 
and narrow mind, with little grace of manner, often 
with glaring faults of thought and reasoning, great 
deficiency in taste, and even a spice of egotism, have 
yet preached the great leading truths of the Gospel in 
Gospel language, and with most blessed spiritual 
results ? We do not forbid these men, " lay preachers," 

* James ii. 20, 24. The more eagerly and vehemently we set 
forth in the free Gospel of God's grace a righteousness which 
we no more work out than we make the sun, the more urgently 
should we press on men that the true acceptance of Jesus as Priest 
is also acceptance of Him as King. Loose living among profess- 
ing Christians is a sad foe to the doctrines of grace. 



THE MEDICINE IS GOOD. 247 

" evangelists/' or whatever else they may be called, 
because in our judgment they are unscientific in 
thought and inconsecutive in speech. We are glad 
of their results. "When the 'New England farmers 
settled on the prairies of Illinois, and found the fever 
and ague disputing their possession of the place, they 
acquired enough medical skill to carry — ^like Living- 
stone in the African swamps — the store of quinine, 
and to use it perhaps with some disregard of the pre- 
cision of pharmacy. And even so, the friends who 
set forth the Gospel of Grod's grace, with some viola- 
tions of theological proprieties, yet do good — some- 
times where they do not know, or even expect it — 
and their success is one more admonition to us to 
wield the same weapon, or, changing the figure, to 
exhibit the same remedy. Even when we have to 
reason and argue, the most cogent and convincing 
proofs we can bring to our audiences will bQ from the 
Word of God. It is powerful to refute and con- 
vince.* 

* "In general/' says Dr. Broadus, '' rely mainly on Scriptural 
arguments, and prefer those wliicli are plain and unquestion- 
able." A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of 
Sermons, by John A. Broadus, D.D., LL.D., Professor in the 



248 FITNESS IN THE WORD, 

5. There is a power we legitimately acquire by lay- 
ing bare^ from the Word, man's w^ants, and offering a 
suitable remedy. Men need to be converted, brought 
to peace, rest, assurance. 

After the fashion of our blessed Lord, "^ of his 
apostles, f after the fashion of the Reformers of 
the sixteenth century, of the Puritan preachers, of 
the Reformers of the last century — Whitfield, Wes- 
ley, and their associates — let us, through that Word 
which is given for this very thing, seek the con- 
version of men, directly, immediately, constantly. 

For consider what is their attitude. God is the 
one supreme object worthy of affection, trust, 
obedience. He is fixed, abiding, immutable. He 
is a fountain always full and for all, a sun always 
shining. But some are not looking to Him at all. 
They need to be converted — turned to look at Him. 
Some are serving dumb idols — they need to be 

Soutliern Baptist Seminary, GreenviUe, S. C. This volume is 
marked particularly by fullness, minuteness, and the force of 
''good sense." It augurs well for the future ministry of our 
Baptist brethren that they are receiving training like that of this 
book, which only came under the author's notice, he regrets to 
say, when most of these lectures had been written. 

^Matt. xviii. 8. f Acts iii. 19. 



ONE WAT FOR ALL. 249 

turned to Him, and from them. Some have heard 
of Him, and are deliberately tm^ning their backs on 
Him, rejecting Him, saying to Him : " What have I 
to do with Thee ? " They need to be converted. 
And some who have turned and looked to Him are 
looking away, or trying to look at once to Him and 
to other objects, of ambition, or indulgence, or 
selfishness, or worldliness. They need, like Peter, 
to be " converted "—reconverted, restored ; and the 
means are the same as in the case of the others, and 
the process through which they must pass is not 
essentially different. They, too, must repent, and 
do the first works. There is not an open, common 
way by which sinners come to the mercy-seat, and a 
retired and private way for backsliding saints. If 
disciples go back into the ways of sinners, as sinners 
they must weep bitterly and be . forgiven and re- 
stored. 

And if men are thus alienated from God, how 
cogent are the reasons for our seeking, by the 
means He gives us, their conversion, seeing that 
in a way that must remain a mystery to us 
here, it pleases God to employ human instru- 
mentality for saving purposes. Remember the 



250 U8E IT EABNESTLY. 

doom of unbelief : " I called and ye refused. I 
stretched out niy hand and no man regarded." 
Eemember the words from the lips of Incarnate 
mercy, " Depart ye cursed ! " Eemember the solemn 
and judicial statement, " He that hath not the Son 
shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on 
him." Nor can we forget the danger of those who, 
without apparent deliberate rejection of Grod's 
overtures, practically disregard them. " How shall 
we escape if we neglect so great salvation ? " Could 
its ^ utter impossibility be more forcibly suggested 
than by the unanswerable question ? That there was 
intelligence only aggravates the guilt, and intensifies 
the doom. I know how some, bending, I must think, 
. the principles of exegesis to their feelings of human- 
ity, substitute " end of being " for punishment ; 
but we cannot well read that the servant Vv^ho knew 
his lord's will and did it not shall be annihilated, 
where the master says " beaten with many stripes." 
There are no .degrees in annihilation. We are not 
informed — for the Scriptures are practical, and never 
make a needless parade of knowledge — regarding 
them who never heard the way of life ; but to us 
the appeal may well be made : ^' He that despised 



DIVINE SANCTIONS. 251 

Moses' law died without mercy under two or three 
witnesses : of how much sorer punishment, suppose 
ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden 
under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the 
blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, 
an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the 
Spirit of grace ? For we know him that hath said, 
Yengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, 
saith the Lord. And again. The Lord shall judge 
his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the 
hands of the living God." 

It may seem to some as if this put the Lord in an 
unfavorable light; but we are no judges of such 
matters. It is our own cause. Probably some of 
the juvenile criminals in our prisons regard the laws 
that keep them there unfavorably. But that, surely, 
is no reason for changing the laws. Their views 
can neither be candid nor comprehensive; and the 
chasm between them and virtuous citizens is nothing 
to the great gulf fixed between the Lord God 
Omnipotent and human criminals. ^ 

* It is aUeged, indeed, that figurative language is confessedly 
employed in tlie descriptions of tlie future of the impenitent, 
and the question is put to the popular mind— Shall there be 



252 DIVINE GBAGE. 

But that the Scriptural view of God's anger against 
impenitent man- robs God of His majesty is a 
chimera. If it has ever had this effect, it is because 
the presentation has been incomplete. The " severity " 
has been detached from the " goodness." 

For another reason for our seeking the conversion 
of men is found in God's manifested love ^nd mercy 
in Christ. He has sent His Son. The atonement 
has been made. All things are ready. His hands 
are stretched out in entreaty. His voice calls men 
to the mercy-seat: "This is my beloved Son, hear 
ye him." His Son left behind him the means of 
reaching and inviting the race : any limit put to the 
giving of this invitation is the work of man, not of 
God. His servants they " took, and beat one, and 
killed another." Yet he continues to send them. 
His Spirit pleads in human consciences — all too often 
in vain. What man is there able to assert the 

literal fire and brimstone? But what tlien? Sliall there be 
literal streets of pure gold like clear glass ? This, too, is 
figurative ; but does it prove that there is no heaven ? Why do 
men use figures ? Because they mean nothing ? Or is it not 
because common didactic speech fails to convey the force and 
vividness of the intended idea ? Figures witliout any b^sis of 
fact would be falsehoods. 



BESEECHING MEN. 253 

silence of a voice within him ? But it speaks 
innumerable warnings in vain. Imagination, Inst, 
love of pleasure, or ease, or money, or power, make 
their reports to the Will, and, affecting sometimes a 
great show of fairness and deliberation, it decides 
against Conscience so uniformly that the wounded 
and discouraged monitor retires to write those records 
of contemptuous refusal that shall be read in the light 
of the judgment day. 

Let me implore you, then, dear friends, if it 
please God to put you into the ministry, pre- 
pare your sermons from the Word, and order 
your work with a view to the conversion of 
men. That tHey be intelligent, orderly, cultured, 
is well. That they be converted is the consum- 
mation short of which it is not permitted to 
you to stay your efforts. Labor to '^ present every 
man perfect in the day of Christ." Tell them that 
they lose by every day they stay away from the 
Saviour, even if they be saved at last. Tell them 
that every day's delay diminishes the likelihood of 
their turning to the Lord, for the heart grows accus- 
tomed to evil, and the will takes its set ; tell them 
that every day's resistance to the Spirit increases the 



254 DELA T IS DANGEBO US. 

likelihood of the Spirit's withdrawal. Tell them 
that while death's arrows are in every wind, they 
run positive risk of death eternal. Do not fear 
men's frowns. None will reproach you for fidelity 
in the day of accounts — none on their deathbeds. 
Do not fear the alleged " current of opinion." It was 
thus that Edwards, Brainard, D wight, and Pay son, 
preached, and the noblest and most enduring things 
in New England were the result. If the sentiment 
of the time is against their way, so much the worse 
for the sentiment ! Paul and Peter and John and 
James so " reproved and rebuked and exhorted, 
with all long-suffering and doctrine." Nor is this 
New Testament doctrine only. That men turn to 
the Lord has been the one imperative demand of all 
Scripture : " Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die ? " 
The one unanswerable appeal from Divine mercy, 
and the one way of reconciliation and sonship, from 
the first, has been to Jew and Gentile, as the 
Lord said by Jeremiah (xxiv. 7) : "And I will give 
them an heart to know me, that I am the Lord : and 
they shall be my people, and I will be their God : 
for they shall return unto me with their whole 
hearty 



'* / BELIEVE m THE HOL Y GHOST," 255 

6, And, finally, there is available the power of the 
Holy Ghost. He came on the early prophets and 
their words became oracles ; on the Son of Man,*^ and 
He spake with authority ; on the early disciples, and 
they spake as with tongues of fire. 

There are, indeed, conditions of His coming, for 
God gives His gifts in a way appropriate to their 
nature and to that of their recipients. Prayer is 
one of these, easy in appearance, difticult in reality to 
our proud nature. Most men will find it easier to 
preach than to pray in secret. 

Renunciation of our own strength is implied. We 
must be emptied of self, that we may be filled with 
the spirit. The tradition still lingers in the place, 
after two centuries, of a historical sermon. A young 
minister was desired to preach on the " Communion- 
Monday," as is called, in Scotland and Ireland, the 
day after the Lord's Supper has been observed. He 
trembled, went to the fields, tried to evade the duty, 
was brought almost by violence : and five hundred souls 
dated their spiritual impressions from the sermon. 
Strength was perfected in felt weakness. 

* See Isa.. Ixi. , and Luke iv. 18. 



256 CONDITIONS OF III8 AID. 

Hard worh is implied; not our indolence or ease, 
but labor, is the channel in which the divine energy 
flows. We must labor in getting possession of the 
truth, in telling it, and in following up our public 
teaching by private effort. The lesson taught by 
Quintilian, and ascribed to many others, we must 
learn ; bottles must have the water — -not thrown on 
them standing in rows, but — poured into each, one by 
one, if they are to be filled. 

There must be a single eye. It would not be safe 
to trust success in the hands of the proud and self- 
seeking. They would claim the glory and be made 
worse. 

There must be true love; to the good our supe- 
riors as generous admiration, to our equals as 
brotherly affection, to the vile and wicked as compas- 
sion. Love lays the wires along which the fire runs. 
Hearts burning with hate drive away the gentle dew. 
Shall the Holy Dove come down, great as the need is, 
where anger, wrath, malice, and envy make a 
church their arena ? But where the Spirit comes the 
feeblest worker, for spiritual purposes, is irresistible. 

But what shall we say more — what can we say 
more — than our Lord said to His disciples ? " He that 



THE POWER OF CHRIST, 257 

believetli on me, the works that I do shall he do 
also." What ! unstop deaf ears, open blind eyes, 
raise the dead ? Yes ; even so, nor is this all : " And 
greater works than these shall he do, because I go to 
my Father." (John xiv. 12.) Greater ! Yes ; even 
so. " Greater " in numbers, in their diffusion, in 
their startling accompaniments — even the shadow of 
Peter healing — and in the results over the pagan 
world. But they did them in Him, as^ His ; by His 
Spirit, for He fails not to say, " Because 1 go to my 
Father." He sends the Spirit down, and sach results 
follow as Peter's sermon produced. 

Oh ! for this Spirit of truth, light, love, holiness, 
on colleges and seminaries, on ministers and mission- 
aries, on churches, and Christless hearers ! Without 
Him, we are going through the motions of God's 
army, but winning few conquests. With Him, we be- 
come a victorious host. The people fall under Him. 
He rules in the midst of His enemies. " Gird thy 
sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy 
glory and thy ma]est3^ And in thy majesty ride 
prosperously, because (in the cause) of truth, and 
meekness, and righteousness." 



APPEE'DIX. 



( Various questions fiamng been put in writing , a separate hour 
was devoted to their consideration. Questions and answers are 
here given, omitting only those which have no general interest. 
Sometimes one paper contained more than one query,) 



Would it not aid a minister, on entering a new parish, to 
obtain, at the first, the roll of members of the church, so as to 
know who they are ? 

I can hardly think of a minister overlooking 
this matter at the very outset ; and if he did over- 
look it, I should hope deacons or elders would make 
the suggestion. If they do not work themselves, 
they ought surely to be a kind of external conscience 
to the pastor. 

In making the acquaintance of the people, in the first pastoral 
calls, is it best to avoid speaking on religious topics, unless they 
are suggested by the other parties ; and to make the acquaintance 
of the people before speaking on such topics in pastoral calls ? 

Much will depend on circumstances. If, for 

example, your congregation is such that you call 

once in every couple of months, as many can, you 

may defer direct introduction of religious topics. 



260 PREACH CHRIST. 

So also if yon are being taken ronnd to be intro- 
duced. But if yon have a large congregation, and 
once a year is almost as mnch as yon can hope to see 
the families, then it is too long to defer the business 
of, your visit till some time in the second year of 
your pastorate. 

Then, again, discrimination must be made, founded 
on the hind of the families and individuals. Some 
are demonstrative ; others, no less true and good, 
shrink from the expression of their own spiritual 
feelings. 

One rule is safe : let all the talking with the mem- 
bers of the congregation on religion be about their 
own, and not their neighbors' religion. Many per- 
sons fluently confess the sins of their former pastors, 
and those of their fellow- worshipers. Do not hear 
such confessions, if you can help it. 

Ouglit every sermon have Christ for the focus ? 

Every sermon ought to have the doctrine^ of 
Christ in it in form or in solution. One may preach 
Christ controversially, non-evangelically ; and one 
may preach law, commandments, duties, evangeli- 
cally. In a congregation that is large, frequented by 
strangers, with many non-communicants, I should 



''FREE BEATS'' 8TSTEM, 261 

like to put a distinct word for Christ in every 
address. Nor need this be monotonous, for He is 
offered to men in endless variety of ways. 

Is it weH to foHo.w any system or round of doctrine in 
preaching ? 

It is well to be consecutive. Imagine the 
sermons of Dwight's Theology preached without 
regard to subject^ and their diminished value to 
intelligent hearers. If it is meant to follow in one's 
own mind any system., I do not see how an orderly 
mind can -help it. One is as much bound by the 
laws of thought to have a system of doctrine. as a 
botanist to have a system of botany. He sees a 
plant, and cannot . help thinking where it belongs. 
So a theologian feels regarding a truth. Truths are . 
in families as much as plants, and like human fami- 
lies in this, that if you know one member well you 
cannot well help getting introduced to the others. 

How sliaU we reach the masses? Will not free-seat sys- 
tem, by abolishing class distinction, help to solve this problem ? " 

I have no expectations from the " free-sseat " 
system. It is, in my judgment, a product of senti- 
ment and ignorance of human nature. The masses 
are to be reached as leaven reaches the masses of 



262 WHITHER TO GO. 

dough. It infects the particles next it, and they the 
next, and so on. I should hope much from churches 
so constructed that the poorest householders could 
also be pewholders. Giving money to support reli- 
gion is a part of a religious education. 

How do you make prayer-meetings interesting ? 

This whole subject is mixed up. "Interesting'' 
to whom ? The Lord ? The suppliants ? The spec- 
tators ? The only way is to teach men to pray ; to 
eliminate those who preach, or rhapsodize, or scold, or 
" lament," interminably ; to promote general fervor 
among the people, and apply to the meeting the ordi- 
nary principles of Christian common sense. I would 
not set much store by " interesting " prayer-meetings 
by themselves. I have known of such that were little 
more than a young people's frolic. The prayer-meeting 
will be as the taste and as the life of the congregation. 

Please say something about choosing a field. At hoijie or 
abroad ? East or West ? 

No one "can give general directions here of any- 
value. A man with no facility for learning new 
tongues should not go to a foreign field. A man 
whose nature is liot elastic, w^ho is offended with 
new things, ought not to go West. One must con- 



ABO UT THE SINGmG. 263 

sider his own aptitudes ; and when he has done his 
best to reach a conchision, he may find himself 
where he never thought he was fit for. A man must 
put himself at his Master's disposal, and be ready to 
go where the way seems open. It is a nice thing 
when the field chooses him. 

What is your opinion of the plan, which has been adopted 
in some places, of substituting a Bible-exercise for the second ser- 
mon on Sunday ? 

If we got parishes, like handfuls of dough, to 
be molded as we please, a Bible-exercise might be a 
good second service ; but we do not. There are the 
"traditions of the elders," and violent dealing with 
them and the alienation of good people more than 
outweigh the good. Here and there " Bible-exer- 
cises," while fresh, or in the hands of versatile men, 
do much; but there is often a drawback. Get up 
Bible- classes. Teach them yourself. Get others to 
teach them, and make your second sermon a good 
Bible-exercise. We must teach the people as they 
are able to bear it. 

Do you include choir singing among the fine arts which are 
not of assistance to the preacher of- the gospel ?^ 

Whenever singing is so elaborate that the people 



264: THE noGTons. 

cannot join, it is an evil ; and it matters little 
whether the evil is from solo, quartette, or choir. 
And if the whole congregation came to sing so that 
the attention would be largely fixed on the singing^ 
it would be an evil too. Everybody laughs at 
the story of " the most eloquent prayer ever ad- 
dressed to the people of Boston." There is the 
same underljnng absurdity to me in the praise of 
God being " grand." Grand to whom ? (See Ps. 
li. 17 and Isa. Ixvi. 1, 2.) 

. It has appeared to me that the ministrations of the pastor to 
the sick are often hurtful to the work of the physician. For 
instance, the favorable issue of a cert,ain case, the doctor is as- 
sured, depends almost entirely upon quietness and absence 
of things that would bring excitement. The pastor, in his kind 
consolation, speaks of future hopes, which will immediately con- 
vey to the mind of the sick person the idea that his is considered 
a doubtful case. This, unless the person is already well 
resigned, and, perhaps, then, will bring more or less of excite- 
ment, which may be damaging. 

This will, perhaps, indicate what is meant. Will you please 
give us some suggestions upon this matter? And, as a result of 
your experience, howlar, do you conclude, the pastor should, as 
a matter of discretion as well as courtesy, commit himself to the 
directions of the physician, as to when and how far these things 
should be spoken of ? 

Physicians are like other men — wise and otherwise ; 
but they are physicians; and when a man puts him- 



PATIENTS' RIGHTS. 265 

self, or is placed by his friends, in a physician's 
hands, the physician is master at his own discretion: 
I may have reason to think a parishioner is trusting 
his affairs in the hands of a lawyer of defective 
wisdom or integrity, but 1 have no right and no call, 
imless consulted, to urge my opinion on my parish- 
ioner. So, if the doctor says his patient is to see no 
one, I have no call to go. It is a part of a man's 
liberty, as regards me, to trust his money in the 
hands of anybody, and to commit himself to a doctor 
absolutely ; and in the case described I have no 
responsibility. Practically, I have had no difficulty 
with medical men. It will usually be found that 
where they say a visit is useless, on account of the 
mental condition of the patient, they are right. 

j^t the same time, I think doctors sometimes 
mistake as to the effect of a prayer, for example. 
Men are as often soothed and quieted as disturbed 
by religious truth. Of course a minister should have 
common sense in his visits. But that is an element 
which neither profession can secure in the members 
of the other. 

And it does seem to m.e absurd, in a Christian 
country, perhaps familj^, for a man, about whose 
12 



266 GONTROYEBSIAL 8EBM0N8, 

relation to God and eternity nothing is known, to be 
kept in the doctor's hands till there is not a hope for 
his life — till, perhaps, his brain is wandering or he is 
comatose — and then call the clergyman. But the 
trouble is that so many are keenly solicitous about 
getting human care for the body, and so willing to 
run risks in a world where loss or safety is not cog- 
nizable. I remember a bright woman, a physician's 
daughter^ mentioning to me that a medical man had 
been brought to see a gentleman, whose fee exceeded 
the annual income of the patient's clergyman. 
" Well," said she, '' it shows how much more men 
think of their bodies than their souls." It was not 
logical, but it had a basis of fact. 

Suppose a missionary of tlie Mormon Church, (or, as he 
would can it, of the ''Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ 
of Latter Day Saints ") comes into a town and plants a church, 
what is the duty of the ministers of other churches in town, 
and what their wisest course ? 

I am interested in this, because such a church has lately been 
planted in the town where I live, and may be, I suppose, in any 
other town. 

One must consider the circumstances. Ministers 
may advertise obscure errors into notoriety or appar- 
ent importance. The circulation of a terse and timely 



WOMEN IN CHURCH, 267 

tract, the use of a newspaper column, or the lesson 
in the Bible-class, may warn, or, better still, pre- 
occupy with the opposed truth. Not that I have any 
fear of controversy honestly and ably conducted. 
But it must have an adequate and good purpose. I 
heard, the other day, of a minister who always got 
into controversial preaching when the warm weather 
made people drowsy. He kept them listening by 
showing up the rival denominations. 

I would like to ask about the experience of a minister. 
What relation should his preaching bear to his experience? 

One who honestly expounds God's word will 
often set forth experiences he may not have : if, for 
example, he expounds the Ephesians. But he will 
set them forth as Paul's. If he has no rapturous feel- 
ings of his own he will not speak — if he is perfectly 
truthful — as if he had just been in the third heavens. 
A preacher ought to avoid every falsetto note. When 
he can say " I know this, from experience, to be 
true," let him say it. 

If I have rightly understood an illustration given in your lec- 
ture-on February 26, you fully recognize the fact that inactivity 
not only tends to paralyze the inactive members of the body, but 
also to enfeeble the other members. 

Is it not, then, the duty of a Christian minister to insist upon. 



268 EOW MUCH STUDY. 

that the 'Christian women should take an active part in prayer- 
meetings ? 

Does not the silence of the women tend to diminish the activity 
of the male members of the church? And does it not produce 
much of that dragging and dullness which js so prevalent 
in prayer-meetings ? 

Inactivity of a Ohiircli where itoitght to he actively 
paralysis, and a paralyzed man, unable to take exer- 
cise, gets other maladies. An idle Church gets fatty 
degeneration of the heart ; or it gets to be censorious, 
quarrelsome, or something undesirable. But this 
argument vailed under a question, legs the question. 
My statement had respect to neglected duty. It 
assumes that it is the duty of Christian women to 
take an active part in mixed meetings. But that is 
in dispute. Whether women's active aid, as speakers 
or leaders, would improve the prayer-meeting, as 
such, I cannot tell. I think it -would make them 
more " lively " sometimes. I am strongly in favor of 
women's prayer-meetings ; and the most of the good 
Christian women I know would rather attend a dull 
mixed meeting than lead it in prayer. But I do not 
judge the excellent persons who think otherwise. 

About what proportion of a pastor's time should be devoted 
to pastoral work, and how much to his studies ? 

I think a minister in good health, and doing his 



TO GET TEE PEOPLE OUT 269 

work easily and naturally, should visit some on at 
least five days of every week. I have done that for 
' months together, and would do it now if it were not 
for interminable boards, committees, and other dis- 
tractions of which the Millennial Church will be free. 
A few. hours a day spent in visiting give exercise, 
bodily, intellectual, moral. One studies better for it. 
"Are there not twelve hours in the day?" Each 
man must determine how much is to be given to 
study ; only let him not * call it study when he is 
lying on the sofa, laughing over '^ The Innocents 
AhroadP 

How can a minister find out what is tiie best literature of 
tlie day, and how can lie most easily and effectually keep up with 
the most advanced knowledge of the day in connection with his 
regular duties ? 

A good review, the talk of his brethren, and a 

clerical club, ought to keep him acquainted with good 

books. It is a great snare to many men to be abreast 

of the literature of the time. What does a parish in 

Maine care about the writer of Shakespeare, or the 

author of Junius' Letters ? 

In our country towns, probably, not half of the population 
attend churches. How, or by what measures, can this outside 
population be effectually reached ? 



270 CLEBIGAL MANNERS, 

Preach so that those who attend will report favor- 
ably, and then go to the houses of the non-attendants 
and confirm the report. I have labored for five years 
to get persons to church, and been rewarded with suc- 
cess. Our people could help us in that efibrt if they 
would. 

Have you any opinion regarding clerical smoking ? 

Yes, a very unfavorable opinion. I was brought 
up to think badly of it ; so you may discount my 
view. But I cannot but think that the flavor of 
smoking is offensive to many delicate persons, and it 
is difficult to many to smoke and lack some odor of 
it. Many " nice " people, even though some of their 
own family snioke, dislike it in ministers. I think 
it often injurious and not often necessary, and would 
advise those who have not become dependent on 
tobacco to preserve their freedom. 

Is any account to be made of clerical manners ? 

Undoubtedly : a clergyman has no more right to 
be rude, slovenly, or ill-bred, than any other gentle- 
man. He may be ignorant of some of the forms of 
artificial society ; but he will be forgiven if he has 



BEAD SELECTIONS. 271 

obviously gentle feeling. jN"o minister ought to take 
liberties because he is a minister. 

Should there be devotional exercises at every pastoral visit ? 

IsTot necessarily ; company,- interruptions, or occu- 
pation of the family may render reading or prayer, 
or both, undesirable. But a minister should make his 
people understand that he is always happy to be 
invited : and as far as possible, he should encourage 
the people to admit him to the living room. How 
much time city ministers lose in looking at drawing- 
room furniture ! 

Would it be wise -for a minister to give selections, occasion- 
ally, to his people, instead of his own ? 

Perhaps so. But he should announce them as 
selections. That is demanded by honesty ; and soon 
the people would feel that they could select for them- 
selves, and want another minister. 

What relation should the text bear to the sermon ? 
The text should sustain, suggest, and give tone 
to the sermon. The main thought of the text should 
usually be the main thought of the sermon. A text 
must not be made 2i, jpreiext. 



2Y2 W0BD8 UEGALLED. 

In delwering your sermons, to what extent do you recall the 
language in which they were written f 

When you have once put a thought into the best 
language you know, and have to repeat the thought, 
the mind will readily run in the same track, ^nd with- 
out effort. But no attempt is made to recall the 
language, except where something- turns on a word. 
In point of fact, only a small proportion of the phrase- 
ology is reproduced. -Ko effort should be made to 
remember structure of sentences, or collocations of 
phrases, or even place of paragraphs. If a paragraph 
does not come in naturally, let it go. 

Should the writing of a sermon be commenced before all the 
material is collected and orderly arranged ? 

I think it is better to be in possession of enough 
materials, and an arrangement, before you begin the 
final writing. You may leave out some of your ma- 
terial, and find new and better, as you advance. But 
it is wise to have enough at the beginning. Most 
ministers have pieces of sermons that never got them- 
selves finished — "untimely figs," of no use to any 
human interest. 

Should a minister entirely avoid theatrical and operatic per 
f ormances ? 



SEEING LADIES. 273 

I am a poor authority on this. I never saw a play 
acted ; never was at the opera in my life. 

I presume there is a difference between the two. I 
find ministers speaking on both sides of the theater 
question in the same sermon. . All the evidence I 
have yet seen is to the effect that — whatever its 
abstract powers might be — the theater is, in point of 
fact, mischievous on the whole. The best evidence 
of its effect is that the pure plays cannot get players 
or spectators. Those of Shakespeare are, it is alleged, 
kept on the stage at a ruinous cost. The average 
play-goer must have his moral teaching at the theater 
highly spiced, and increasingly so from year to year. 
So I never go, never advise any one to go, am sorry 
when I hear of Christians going, and think a minis- 
ter's usefulness in danger from goin^. 

Many say that a minister should never speak to a female 
alone. What is wise on that subject ? 

Such a rule is absurd and impossible in practice. 
No minister ever held- to it. Much nonsense has been 
talked and written, especially lately, on this subject. 
I have seen articles in religious papers that were a 
libel on the Christian Church ; as if Christian women, 
.12* . 



274: DOUBTFUL PEE80N8. 

as a whole, could not be trusted to talk to ministers 
without irregular affections springing up ! A min- 
ister should receive all ladies at his own house, not at 
his study in the church, and not once in a century 
will any inconvenience arise from seeing all ladies 
who come, in that way. I see every lady who unites 
with the Church in my study. If, as sometimes hap- 
pens, a female comes, unknown to me, unintroduced 
or undefined, I hand her over to my wife. 



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